


After

by zobo900



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan, Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Annabeth is a BAMF, Bianca is a BAMF, Camp Half-Blood (Percy Jackson), Camp Jupiter (Percy Jackson), Character Death, Dark!Percy, Dean Winchester Bears the Mark of Cain, Demon!Dean, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, I try to make it an even mix, If you are only in one of the fandoms it would still make sense, Men of Letters Bunker (Supernatural), Original Character Death(s), POV of Original Character, Past Relationship(s), Post-The Blood of Olympus (Heroes of Olympus), Prophecy, Sam is a BAMF, Tags Are Hard, Violence, We Die Like Men, bc it's about a war, but when I finish I'll go back and edit it, combo of pjo and spn monsters, he's still in love with Annabeth, hunters and halfbloods unite, idk - Freeform, kind of, like overall, montauk beach house, more tags as they come up, no beta and no preview, past solangelo - Freeform, quarantine projects, there are many a BAMF
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-05
Updated: 2020-06-03
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:35:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 13
Words: 63,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24025942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zobo900/pseuds/zobo900
Summary: Set in a mid-apocalypse-esque world where the power has shifted from the olympian gods to their children. Many of the more powerful demigods try to maintain some kind of order, but it turns into a battle for power as the most dangerous people in this new world are left fighting for their claims on souls.Basically, this is the war after the Shift, which is what I call the change in power, from the perspective of an outsider.Idea credit to @AyeletSitaMost of the first chapter is their wording as well, go check out the original idea on their page--Special note on chapter 13--
Relationships: Annabeth Chase/Percy Jackson, Luke Castellan & Thalia Grace
Comments: 6
Kudos: 17





	1. A Seven Foot Moose Hijacks My Life

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [An Idea for Adoption](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7965355) by [AyeletSita](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AyeletSita/pseuds/AyeletSita). 

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam finds oc holly getting beat up and takes her under his wing  
> a month later, they meet annabeth

The first time I noticed that the world had changed, I was buying snacks from a gas station. The shelves were nearly bare, and not a single attendant bothered to pick up the spill of candy bars. I left empty-handed.

The second time I noticed was more permanent.

I was on my way home from the bus stop when I saw a group of teenagers ahead of me. I moved to cross the street since the sun had started to set and there were certain risks I would never be willing to take.

I looked both ways, but there wasn’t a single car on the road. Downtown Manhattan had never been barren no matter the hour.

I stared at the spectacle for one moment longer than I should’ve and a firm shove shocked me out of my daze.

“Excuse me, miss,” he apologized for running into me.

His face looked sincere but something in his tone made me pick up my brisk pace once again.

I heard the rumble of an old muffler.

The sound distracted me for three crucial seconds.

I remember trying to scream when they grabbed me but they had already clasped a hand over my mouth.

I remember them looting my pockets.

I couldn’t blame them. It was nearly impossible to make an honest living now that things had changed. Still, I fought against them, pushing and pulling with all my might.

Somewhere in the back of my mind, I was aware of the black muscle car that rumbled to a stop by the curb. A tall man exited the vehicle and my muggers threw me to the ground before scampering away.

My head met the harsh pavement with a thud I could hear in my spine.

Either the streetlight above me was flickering, or I was going blind. Either the man from the car was helping me to my feet, or the ground was falling away. I couldn’t say for certain.

The darkness of the evening seemed to grow heavier, weighing me down onto a soft surface, pushing me into a dreamless sleep.  
Of course, that could only last for so long.

A guy who appeared to be in his early twenties, but it was really hard to tell under the dirt and slime that caked his skin. His clothes were shredded, worn and discolored. His dark hair hung in unkempt strings down to his shoulders and over his eyes as he bowed his head.

He was chained to a wall, somewhere dark and dry, a cave, a dungeon. Dust filled the air. I wondered if he was dead, but every few seconds his ribcage would rattle as a breath traveled through.

Soft echoes of footsteps emerged from further down a corridor and the man shifted in his restraints.

“Good morning,” he greeted the approaching figure.

He was met with a steady silence and the sound of a cart rolling on a squeaky wheel. I turned to see the cart filled with various instruments, pliers, knives, and more.

The guy laughed wetly but kept himself dangling from his chains.

“Oh, I see, you’re back for more. Can’t get enough of me, sweetheart?” The taunt was ironic coming from someone so dirty, whose skin hung from their weakened bones like a decoration that could do nothing but remind people that there used to be something for it to hold together.

A blow from brass knuckles crashed mercilessly across the man’s face, throwing his body to the side, sounding back and forth across the stone walls, rattling his chains.

A large hand yanked at the hair on the back of his head so he was facing his attacker, but he refused to look at him with his eyes. Instead, he smirked, showing off his face, which was dirty, but unscathed by the attack.

“You’ve tried that already.”

The man with the brass knuckles recoiled. The prisoner remained with his chin turned up and his shoulders pressed against the stone wall as the other man shot a metal arrow at his chest only for it to fall to the floor, broken and useless.

“Nice one,” he said with a devilish grin.

He cocked his head, observing the torturer as he searched amongst his tools for something new.

I noticed for the first time, in the glint of a distant torchlight, that the prisoner’s eyes were the color of the ocean before a storm, churning between green and blue, untamable, and impossibly relentless.

The torturer began to hack at his prisoner with a sword. Throwing hit after hit into his side, they became fiercer and more desperate. I watched the man wince under the strain of being thrown from side to side, but the sword never broke skin.

I awoke drenched in a layer of sweat with a thin blanket tangled at my feet and my wrist tied to the bed frame.

That was the first thing that told me I wasn’t at home. That, and the sheer abundance of stuff that littered the floor.

“You’re awake.”

I recognized the voice of the man that had saved me. How long had it been? Hours? Days? Weeks? I had no way of knowing.

“Who the hell are you?” I hissed, struggling against my restraint.

“My name is Sam Winchester. You’re safe.” He sat down in a chair next to me. Everything in me told me he was lying, but I’d learned to see a liar's face, and he was telling me the truth.

“Where am I?” I asked.

“A cheap hotel room.”

I examined the stained carpeting and the fluorescent lighting. That was the truth as well.

“Right. Hey, Sam,” I began. “If I’m so safe, why am I handcuffed to the bed frame?” I rattled the metal aggressively.

“I apologize for that. I had to be sure you weren’t dangerous.”

He pulled a key from his pocket and freed me. I rubbed the ring around my wrist where the metal had been a bit too snug. I found that I couldn’t blame him either for tying me up.

“You hit your head pretty hard, but I don’t think you’re concussed,” he explained. “So, tell me, are you a hunter?”

“I live in Manhattan.”

“A halfblood?”

“A what?”

“A witch, an angel, a fallen god?”

“I don’t know who the fuck you are, but I’m human. Ever heard of it?”

“That can’t be.” His eyebrows pulled close together like I was a puzzle he couldn’t solve. “You’re the Flame.”

“The what? Look, thanks for saving me and everything, but I should probably go.”

“Wait.” I paused at the door against my will. “Don’t go, I need your help.”

“Buddy, you need professional help.”

“Are you telling me you haven’t noticed it? The Shift?”

I knew exactly what he was talking about, the empty gas station, no traffic in Manhattan, but I refused to confirm it.

“There are things in this world that shouldn’t exist, vampires, demons, werewolves, ghosts. It’s my job to keep them at bay, but we’re losing. And for some reason, we need you to win.”

“You know I can’t even throw a punch without spraining something. Assuming you’re telling the truth, I’m the last person that you’d need on your team.”

“Trust me, I’m not happy about it either, but it’s not for me to decide. You are the one with a choice. You can stay here, train, fight, or you can go back to the group home they put you in after your parents died.”

“How do you know about that?”

“You always thought their death was weird, right? Eyes burned out of their skull.” He paused to gauge my reaction. “They were a casualty of war, Holly. It’s time to pick a side.”

In hindsight, I should’ve walked away, but something pulled me to stay.

He taught me to hold a gun, a knife, throw a punch, light a fire. He taught me to hunt, and it didn’t take long for me to become acquainted with the things we were hunting.

First, it was a wraith with a taste for the insane. Then it was a werewolf gone rogue, a shifter, a ghoul, a demon.

After a month of the same, I wasn’t any better at aiming or dodging. Now I had marks to prove it. My failure made Sam grow colder and less forgiving, and he rarely let me sleep the night through.

There were others beside Sam. We ran into them on the road, or they would ask for favors. I would meet them, shake their hands, and they would ask if I was the Flame. Sam would only nod in response. They never seemed impressed. The more of them that recognized me, the easier it was to forget that I’d had a life before this.

It was Saturday night. Any normal person would be found in some kind of club or bar, hanging out, drunk. I, of course, being desperately alone, would probably be binging a TV show. Instead, I was in a creepy basement waiting for some kind of monster to jump out of the darkness.

"You ready, kid?" asked Sam.

"Sure," I lied, knowing it was the only acceptable answer. As far as I understood, Sam spent his entire life doing this shit, so he had little patience for hesitation.  
Something shuttered under the weight of a foreign footstep, and, obviously, Sam was the first to react. He aimed his shotgun at the sound and shot.

By then, I got to my senses and readied my gun as well. The motion became useless once the monster started talking. I hesitated and lost my handle on the safety, nearly dropping my only weapon.

"Now, now, is that a way to treat a lady?" the monster crooned.

The voice was closer than I had been expecting. Everything was harder when the darkest sunglasses known to man were duct-taped to your face. Of course, it was still better than being able to see and turning into stone.

I heard Sam take in a breath that suggested he was going to come up with a smartass response, but before he could get it out, there was a thin slice of light and the familiar sound of a head falling to the floor.

I could make out the vague outline of a person illuminated by a long weapon.

"Who's there?" asked Sam.

Nothing of the figure was more discernible than a hint that they had arms.

"That was sloppy," they accused instead of answering the question. "You're getting out of shape, Winchester.”

I ripped the sunglasses off my face and waited for my eyes to adjust to the dim light.

"You killed our monster," said Sam unhappily. "It took me forever to track it down."

I finally got a good look at our visitor. Her posture gave her the illusion of being tall, but she was truly around my height. She looked like most of the people I’d met while on the road with Sam, well-trained, hardened, and tired. She had patches of grime on her face and in her curly blonde hair that was pulled into a chaotic ponytail. The only thing that looked completely clean was the steely grey of her eyes.

"I saved you the dirty work," said the woman dismissively. "And I need to talk to you."

"Is it about him?" After the long month of fighting, I had yet to learn who he was. I knew he was bad, evil, dangerous. He was what we were fighting against.

"Worse," said the woman. "Now come outside. This place is suffocating."

She walked without checking to see if we were following her. I had a feeling people didn’t disobey her often.

Outside was barely lighter than the indoors, only illuminated by the moon and someone’s forgotten porchlight.

"That's the Flame?" she asked, gesturing to me.

Even with the blonde hair, it was hard to see her as pretty. There was something too sharp about her expression. It reminded him of Sam. The man couldn't really be called handsome, although he was tall and muscular. There was something too old and sad in his eyes.

"That's Holly," corrected Sam. She looked disapprovingly, and the smallest squint of her eyes managed to make me feel impossibly small.

"Holly," he said when the woman didn’t move to introduce herself. "This is Annabeth Chase, an important ally."

"Nice to meet you,” I said but didn’t bother offering my hand. Instead, I dipped my head in an awkward sort of bow. It felt appropriate.

Annabeth studied me relentlessly, searching for something that wasn’t there.

"Are you sure?" she asked Sam

"You were the one that came to me with the prophecy," he reminded her.

I’d heard whispers of the prophecy here and there, but nobody had deemed me ready to hear it as of yet. All I could gather was that I appeared somewhere in it, and I was an important piece. Generally, people were uncomfortable with the fact that I, of all people, was that important piece.

"Did you want anything or did you just come here to ruin our hunt?" asked the Winchester impatiently. The woman looked at him sharply. Her grey eyes glowed like knives.

"I’ve been listening, as you know, and I’ve learned something that may be of interest to you.” She paused so her next words would have the impact they deserved.

“His next target is Hades," she said finally. “He’s going to try to poach the souls in Asphodel first, but he won’t stop until he gets all of them.’’

"Can he do it?" asked the older man. I wasn't sure what Asphodel was, but I did know about souls. In the weird, changed world I was now part of souls were power.

"No," said Annabeth in a grim voice. Sam raised an eyebrow. "The Princess won’t let him."

"Who's The Princess?" I interjected.I probably should’ve stayed quiet, but I was sick and tired of being blind in this world, and I knew Sam wasn’t going to explain it to me later.

Annabeth looked at me unimpressively. I was sure she was going to slap me in the face, or worse, ignore me, but she began to explain.

"She calls herself Angella, but that’s not her real name," she said. "She's a camp alumnus and a daughter of Hades. I've dealt with her in the past, she's dangerous."

Something told me that if Annabeth thought she was dangerous, I should take her at her word. I also remembered the mythology lessons that had appeared in between sparring with Sam where I had learned about Hades. He was Lord of the Underworld, very powerful, very dangerous. His daughter couldn’t be much better.

"What will she do if he attacks?" asked Sam carefully. In his hand, his shotgun was still ready.

"She can't defeat him," promised Annabeth, "But she'd try. Her powers… Let's just say there's a reason the Big Three aren’t supposed to have kids. She’d destroy all the souls without trying, nobody would have them.”

"What does it have to do with us?" I asked. Annabeth looked at me like I was a simpleton.

"If The Princess fights, her brother fights with her. If her brother fights with her, he doesn't fight with us. Without him, we have no chance of surviving when Grace decides to attack and she will kill both of you, believe me, you especially." I kept my mouth shut. I may not know Grace, or the Princess’s brother, but I understood death. “I thought so. Winchester, tell me, what are we going to do?" she directed back to Sam.

"The Romans-" he started.

"-Will kill both of us on sight. The Praetor is siding with Grace, obviously. The stupid, treacherous, little-"

"Annabeth," Sam cut her down before she lost focus. "What about Reyna? She likes you."

"And that's why she doesn't lead Grace's armies herself. Luke hurt her legion, she's not going to do anything for us," said Annabeth bitterly. "We're lucky Grace doesn't have anyone with brains or she would have already used that against us."

"Maybe Luke could stop her?" suggested Sam. Annabeth snorted.

"Luke has nothing on her," she said.

That terrified me to no end. I’d met Luke before, an accident really. He was on our side as far as I could tell and in charge of whoever he wanted to be in charge of. Luke was probably the strongest, most skilled warrior I’d ever seen in battle, thinking that he had nothing on this Grace made me wonder if I’d chosen the winning side.

"Then you’re saying we have no chance? We’re done?" Sam asked.

“Of course not, I have a plan,” Annabeth corrected. She almost seemed offended at the suggestion. “We’ll have to distract him from attacking the Underworld, a counter offer. That’s where you’ll come in. We’ll have to act fast, and nobody else can be involved. If word gets to Nico he’ll inform The Princess and she’ll defend what’s hers before he has a chance to come near it.”

"What about Luke?" asked Nick. Annabeth's jaw clenched.

"I don't want him involved," she spat.

"You're worried about him," Sam realized.

"You know that monster, Sam, better than anyone. What do you think will happen to Luke if we face him? He's the only family I’ve got left." It was the closest thing to vulnerability Annabeth showed since arriving.

"Alright, so just the three of us," Sam agreed.

"Don’t tell me you’re taking the kid to meet him," Annabeth berated. Personally, I would’ve preferred to stay behind. If Annabeth didn’t want a powerful general to meet him, I was sure to be killed.

"She needs to learn," said Sam with a simple shrug.

"I hope you know what you're doing. I’ll text you the details sooner rather than later."  
Annabeth walked away, leaving Sam and I by the dark car. The whole ride back to the motel I wondered what a person was supposed to wear to meet the most dangerous man in the world.

Everything had happened so fast that night, I hadn’t had any time to grab things before I was on the road. All of the clothes that filled my bags were things that Sam’s friends gave me, or stuff we found for cheap. In this line of work, it was really better if you didn’t wear something that you cared about getting destroyed. Most of the time, it didn't matter that much anyway. Monsters didn't give a damn about what you were wearing, but this wasn't just a hunt.

Three sharp knocks came from the bathroom door where I had been pulling on a fresh pair of jeans and a shirt.

“Are you ready? Chase said she’s on her way,” Sam called through the door.

I nodded and splashed some cold water on my face.

“Holly?”

“Yeah, I’m coming,” I corrected when I realized he hadn’t been able to see me nodding my agreement before.

I was used to the crappy motel rooms by now since that’s where we spent most of our time. There was a bunker in Kansas that we would rarely return to, but I kept my things there anyway.

When I left the bathroom feeling slightly cleaner than before, Sam didn't say anything. He only handed me a silver knife and a pistol.

"Thanks," I said, accepting the weapons.

During my first week, Sam had forced me to complete all my tasks with a knife in my hand. Now, even if I barely managed to use it correctly, the grip not only fit into my hand but, like an extension of myself, it fit into my awareness.

I slid the weapons into their hiding spaces. Knife on the calf, gun in the inside pocket of my jacket. It was easy really, once I let myself learn.

Sam stared out the window, waiting for Annabeth to arrive, so I took his distraction as an opportunity to sit on the bed and breathe for the first time since Sam had caught wind of the case in Illinois.When Sam stood, it was too soon.

“Let’s go,” he ordered, and I dragged myself to my feet.

I sighed as quietly as I could. I really wasn’t in the mood to die today.

Annabeth waited outside with no sign of how she got there. She looked like she’d had a shower. Her hair was wound more neatly in its ponytail and the absence of dirt exposed its honey-colored glow. She had a fresh change of clothes as well, new jeans, t-shirt, even the zip-up sweatshirt she was wearing seemed clean. She didn't hold any weapons, but she wore boots, so it was a safe bet something was hidden there.

She barely gave me a glance before addressing Sam.

“Did you come up with a counteroffer like I asked?”

“Yeah, don’t worry about it,” Sam brushed her off. She didn’t look pleased by that answer as her shoulders bristled and the comment.

“Do you mind telling me what it is?” she hissed pointedly, but Sam held his ground.

“You’re just going to have to trust me,” he insisted.

“Right, because I totally survived this long by trusting people,” Annabeth laughed.

For a long moment, they stared at each other, waiting for the other to blink. I wondered what sort of counter offer would require so much secrecy.

Annabeth flitted her eyes over Sam’s figure as if she was calculating a risk and formulating an escape. She smirked in a way that made me glad she was on my side.

“Fine. Let’s go,” she conceded.

Without even asking, I opened the back door of the car, leaving the passenger’s seat to Annabeth who took it as if she’d been expecting as such.

“Are you any closer to learning how to reverse The Shift?” Sam asked once we were on the main road. Annabeth sighed.

“I told you to stop asking me that,” she groaned. Sam was unperturbed.

“If you think I’m going to take orders from you without a little information now and then, you’ve gotten something else coming to you,” he huffed.

Even from the backseat, I could tell that Annabeth wasn’t impressed.

“I haven’t gotten anywhere,” she relented. “My contacts keep dying, and the fires are burning a lot of the records I could look at. There’s no trace of where it began. All I know is that it’s getting worse.”

“How can you be sure?” Sam pressed farther.

“I can feel it. It’s not obvious since I have so many siblings, but it’s there,” she said quietly, keeping her eyes fixed on the road ahead.

“And as you grow more powerful, so will they,” Sam continued her line of thought.

Annabeth didn’t answer.

Her silence definitely wasn’t a hint for me to speak up, but I took the opportunity anyway.

“I heard Bobby talking about The Shift. What is it exactly?”

Annabeth peeled her eyes from the window with a harsh glare at Sam.

“You haven’t told her?” Her tone was sharp and grating.

“No, I haven’t,” Sam responded flatly, looking straight ahead to avoid the woman’s gaze.

“Well, why the hell not? Don’t you think she needs to know what she’s fighting for?” Her words landed loudly, and Sam pulled his shoulders back in defense.

“And risk her making the same decision the others did? I don’t think so,” he scoffed.

“Right now you’re forcing her to fight blindly,” she explained. “That destroys people.”

Sam paused while he mulled it over before countering.

“Not if she does as she’s told.”

Annabeth had her mouth pulled into a thin line and she leaned toward Sam so he could hear her clearly as she had dropped her voice to a calmer level. The tone did nothing to ease my nerves.

“No,” she shot. “You’re wrong. I’m right, and worst of all, you sound exactly like your father.”

I could almost hear the scowl fall across Sam’s face, one he had given me several times over. The shift in his back told me his father wasn’t his favorite person to be compared to.

Annabeth flopped back into her seat.

“Pull over,” she commanded with a hardness that anyone would bow to in the heat of battle.

Sam pulled the car over to the curb, the lack of traffic making it easy. I wasn’t sure what to expect at this point, Annabeth seemed capable of anything, but her rounding the car and opening the door to sit next to me in the back seat didn’t make it to my list of possibilities.

At Annabeth’s go ahead, Sam took us back onto the road again.

“The Shift happened about a year ago now,” Annabeth started to explain. “We’re not sure what caused it or what will be left when it’s done, but everything has been affected by it. I’m sure you’ve noticed the changes, even small ones.”

I nodded so she would continue. This much, I was familiar with.

“The Shift describes a shift in power. The Olympians, which I’m sure you’ve heard about, had theirs sucked out of them, bit by bit. It’s not completely gone yet, but it has been greatly diminished.” She took a deep breath. “My guess is that whoever caused this shift thought the power could simply be destroyed. Of course, that’s not true. It had to find somewhere to go.”

“Where?” I pushed.

“The gods’ children. Demigods. They were the only vessels already trained to contain that kind of power, so that was the only place it could go. It didn’t take long for us to figure it out, to see the differences. With the gods’ power dispersed things started to fall apart.”

“The stock market collapse, Europe’s plague, the corn that stopped growing,” I listed the tragedies. Only a short time ago, I had joked about it being the end of times, but here I was, driving to my death.

“All of it,” Annabeth confirmed. “We tried to fix it, I swear. We started banding together so we could fill the power vacuum and start to put things back together, but some of us got too ambitious. They began to fight, and when they were evenly matched, they went looking for more power.”

“The souls.”

“Yeah, you can blame that part on the monster we’re going to see. He’s the man with the plan,” she joked darkly.

We pulled into the parking lot of a large hotel with terraces and brick walkways. I had expected the meeting to be in some abandoned warehouse, but I guess the bar of a bust five-star hotel was basically the same thing.

The three made their way into the reception, Annabeth leading the way.

The man who greeted them had sandy blond hair and an eyepatch. He took one look at Annabeth and laughed.

"Of course it's you, Chase," he said.

"Ethan," she said in return, her voice cool and unimpressed. "I thought you were dead.”

"Next time you leave someone for dead, you should stick around to make sure they stay that way," he explained. Annabeth looked unashamed.

"Leave the pretty lady alone, Nakamura,” said a new voice. “She might bite,” he crooned suggestively.

He was taller than Ethan but not as tall as Sam, and his green eyes were locked on Annabeth.

"Dean," Sam interrupted, and I saw the man’s green eyes turn black. I concluded he was a demon and my minimal training wondered if Sam had brought the right knife.

"Sammy!" he cheered cruelly. "Good to see you."

"I wish I could say the same," Sam responded.

This was the monster that everyone feared, the last Knight of Hell.

His black eyes scanned the crowd surrounding us.

“Let’s go somewhere more private to have our chat, what do you think?”

“Splendid,” Annabeth answered with more politeness than I thought she could manage. Dean led them to a private room. There were couches, a fireplace, and two armed soldiers at the doorway.

The classic lounge turned supervillain hideout.

"Sit down," Dean said while gesturing to a table surrounded by four elegant wooden chairs.

Once everyone had taken their seat, Dean at the head, and the rest surrounding, Dean motioned for Ethan to bring the drink cart. He poured himself a whiskey and offered something for the rest of us, but we all declined without a second thought.

"So, to what do I owe the pleasure?" he asked with a clink of the ice in his glass. “If I had my way, I’d only be talking to Annabeth, and leave you less attractive worms to eat the dirt under my shoes.”

"Dean," Sam cut in. He opened his mouth to continue, but Annabeth beat him to it.

"We have an offer for you," she said. Dean raised an eyebrow.

"And what is it, sweetheart?" he asked, leaning closer to her. Annabeth leaned back a bit too quickly. "Oh, let me guess, you want your hero back," he said and smiled smugly. Annabeth looked like her blood froze in her veins.

“Don’t you dare,” she gritted her teeth and let her words come out like frozen air, “Mention him to me again you steaming pile of maggot skin.

"Ooh, touchy subject?" he teased.

"Shut up," she growled “Or you won’t be unkillable when I’m through with you."

"Feisty, I love it," he commented, unafraid. "So, what is your offer?"

"Don't attack the Underworld," Sam intervened.

"And?” Dean pressed.

"You live, for a start," argued Annabeth. "I'm sure you think you're ready, which is adorable, but she will destroy you. If you don’t believe me, you can ask Grace why she won’t be joining you on your conquest."

From what I had remembered, Grace was waiting to attack our forces, and her withdrawal had nothing to do with The Princess’s strength, but Annabeth did make the lie convincing.

"If you really thought she would beat me, you wouldn’t be here," Dean reasoned. "I cannot be killed, believe me." The unspoken words of I’ve tried hung in the air.

"She would kill your army," said Sam.

"C'mon, Sammy, do you really think I give a damn about what happens to the demons?"

I’d never met anyone who dared to call Sam Sammy, and he was certainly less than pleased by the address.

"And the demigods?" asked Annabeth. "If you send them to their deaths, they would stop following you. Without Grace you're nothing.""I'm wounded, you really think that little of me, Annie?" Dean made a face.

“Don’t call me that.”

“I can do whatever I want sweetheart.” He grinned with only half of his face.

“No, you can’t,” she scoffed. “If you could, you would’ve already taken the Underworld, but you’re waiting for Grace, aren’t you? Because I’m right, and you’re terrified of being on the losing side.”

“Well, aren’t you a little wise girl.” I saw Annabeth’s hand shift quickly in her lap. “You paint a pretty picture, but you’re still wrong, cupcake. That doesn’t mean I’m not willing to bargain, and you must’ve come here with more than a few pretty words, so lay it on me. What do you got?”

“Me,” Sam blurted.

I stared at him in shock. There had to be a loophole he was seeing. Dean would kill him, and we needed him alive more than anything.

“You?” Dean parroted back, waiting for the elaboration.

“If you don’t attack the Underworld, you’ll get me. You can have my soul, I can fight for you, whatever you want.”

“Oh, Sammy boy, you think I want you?” he soothed, and his words sounded like fake butter with nothing but salt and green dye.

Sam was quick to argue.

“I know you do. Dean-”

“Stop!” Annabeth shouted. Every single living thing in the room halted. Even Dean paused his amusement. “That is enough. You are not using yourself as a bargaining chip.”

Sam looked relieved to have Annabeth refuse since it likely meant she had a new plan.

“Yeah, Sammy, listen to your wise girl.”

“And you will not call me by that name,” Annabeth growled with a certainty that rattled my eardrums.

In a flash, her sword was out, appearing from nothing. In another flash, it was on the other side of Dean’s neck, his head falling to the floor, the wet thud reminded me of only hours before when it was Medusa’s head being separated from her shoulders.

I was on my feet before my brain had time to tell me to. I was caught between my body moving to the gun in my jacket, and my brain three heartbeats behind, still processing the charging of the guards from the door.

The one with spiky hair and a navy blue suit moved closer. Bullets flew out of my gun and spattered across his chest. The shots did nothing but rip holes in the expensive clothing.

I reached for the knife instead and began to slash at any body part that came near me.

I slammed against the wall.

The room spun wildly.

Somewhere in the distance, Ethan put Dean’s head back on, and all I could hear was the sticky sound of his neck balancing on itself.

A large sword pierced through the chest of the demon in front of me. It’s orange form flashed underneath its vessel before it crumpled helplessly to the floor.

Annabeth helped me to my feet.

I scrambled for my knife, my gun, anything.

I wasn’t in the mood to die.

“Sam, let’s go,” she hissed as we ran for the door. Annabeth slashed down opponents as they came in her way. Demons continued to arrive at the sound of carnage.

“Not so fast, little one,” Dean’s voice gargled from where he sat propped up in a velvet lined chair while Ethan sewed his head back on. “Sam stays.”

“Not a chance,” she assured, tearing another demon's body in two.

“Sam stays, or I take the Underworld,” Dean threatened.

Annabeth put on a face that meant she was calculating the possibilities.

“Annabeth, we can fight through them,” Sam argued with a sudden change of heart, the reality of his offer finally sinking in.

She scanned the crowd of enemies that was still growing. She was slammed against the wall, a knife came flying at her, but she managed to roll away.

“No, we can’t,” she groaned.

With a solid thwack, she knocked Sam to the ground, not dead, but definitely unconscious.

“Good choice. Leave them,” Dean commanded and the demons began to disperse.

Annabeth hauled me to my feet and forced me to run.

My knees ached with every pound against the floor, and a cut throbbed as my adrenaline began to fade, but she dragged me at her own rapid speed until, falling forward and beaten, we made it to the Impala, black and sleek in the first light of morning.

Before I could ask where she’d gotten the keys from, we were speeding away, and I was passing out in the passenger’s seat.


	2. A Stranger Braids My Hair

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> wow, writing a prophecy is hard  
> basically just holly making friends

I had bad dreams.

There weren’t many other options nowadays, so I learned to be grateful when it was one I was familiar with.

The prisoner who couldn’t be hurt appeared in the darkness. When I heard him mumbling, I glanced around the corridor to see who he was talking to. There was nobody there.

“Wait,” he groaned more clearly. “Don’t go yet,” he begged the empty space.

He pulled at his restraints, wincing under the pressure of the rusty metal.

“Just, tell me what the sky looks like one more time,” he whispered and closed his eyes.

For a long time, he stayed like that. He had never seemed so wounded to me. I could’ve sworn I saw a tear fall down his face. The heavy pounding of a visitor echoed through the prison. I saw the man smile, his eyes still closed and his head tilted back as if he was basking in the sunlight that couldn’t reach him here.

“You’re not him,” the man realized without so much as glancing at who had arrived.

“The boss is busy. He sent me instead,” a young voice responded.

I knew not to mistake the young for the innocent anymore, but the sound still sent doubt circling through my head.

“I’m hurt. Here I was thinking he and I had a special bond, but he sends his errand boy when he has a little conflict in his schedule. Forgive me if I feel a bit rejected.” His words scraped through his throat like he hadn’t had a drop to drink in years.

The other rustled through the various instruments on the table. The darkness kept me from seeing much detail in what they were except for the occasional glint of something shiny. A rattle and a clink signaled that he had made his decision, and I watched the dark figure approach the man in chains.

“A blowtorch? Cute. We’ve already established that it doesn't work. You and your boss should’ve compared notes before you got here, would’ve saved you a lot of time,” he chortled.

“You talk big.” He paused to turn on the fire with a roaring hiss. “For someone who's stuck here whether or not we succeed.”

“Not for long.” He smiled, exposing teeth that hadn’t been cleaned in ages.

“Oh, you’re hoping for a rescue? That’s kind of sweet. I hate to break it to you, but you’re all alone here,” he mocked.

The prisoner clenched his fists when the blowtorch was pressed against his chest. His skin refused to burn.

“That’s where you’re wrong,” he answered through dry chuckles. “I haven’t been alone in weeks.”

For weeks, I had been having these dreams. Could he mean…?

His sea-green eyes suddenly flicked directly at me. I held my breath for no logical reason, but the air was punched out when he winked at me. I froze completely, suddenly very aware of my position in the corridor.

The other man ignored the exchange completely and lifted the blowtorch from his chest.

“I guess we’ll just have to get creative then,” he threatened.

The flame of the weapon turned a hideous blue as he brought it towards the prisoner’s face. He jerked back, slamming his back against the wall. The torturer held open a single eye and pressed the angry flame onto his sea-green iris.

Despite the fact that it didn’t seem to damage him physically, he screamed. The sound was broken and desperate. It lasted forever, never pausing to take a breath as the torturer was just as relentless.

I felt a hand on my shoulder, and I jerked away from it. A pang of adrenaline and fear shot through my spine. I opened my eyes. I was no longer in the cavern but in the passenger seat of a car. There were no more screams, just the sound of Annabeth’s voice coaxing me awake.

“Sorry, I need you to drive for a while,” she said. I noticed my surroundings as the light became less harsh. We were in a gas station, and the sun was high in the sky.

I pushed myself up from where I had been collapsed against the door and peered at Annabeth in the driver’s seat. A bag of snacks and sandwiches sat between us in the center console. My stomach lurched at the prospect of food.

Annabeth didn’t seem much better. Her eyes were decorated in dark circles, her face pale, her eyelids drooping. She had a bandage around her thigh which was exposed from the beach shorts. Her T-shirt wasn’t blood-stained or torn, so I figured it was new. The I Heart Indiana that splayed across the front only proved my point.

“Yeah,” I answered her at last. “Where are we going?”

“Long Island. You should change into some fresh clothes, there’s a bag of them in the back seat.”

“Okay,” I sighed, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes. “Where are we?”

“Somewhere in Ohio.” She must’ve been driving for hours.

I nodded before climbing into the back, so I could finally rid myself of the ruined clothes I had on before. In the bag was an identical pair of beach shorts to the ones that Annabeth had on and a large shirt that said, Sweet Home Indiana. I guessed that she had gone clothes shopping in Indiana. When I peeled off my shirt, I noticed that Annabeth had wrapped a bandage around the cut sometime while I was asleep. Blood had started to seep through again, but I couldn’t bring myself to care. I simply pulled the large sleeve of the shirt farther down on my shoulder so the wound was covered.

“You good?” Annabeth called after my awkward shuffling stopped. She spoke through a mouthful of a turkey sandwich.

“Yeah.”

“Here.” She handed me a baby wipe, and I accepted it with a look of confusion. “Wipe your face off, it’ll make you feel better, I promise.”

I did as she said and instantly felt a whole lot cleaner. I was tempted to grab ten more and wipe down the rest of my body, but I forced myself to wait until I could have a shower and do it properly.

We switched seats then. Annabeth handed over the maps with the route she had drawn out in sharpie and showed me the cup of coffee she had reserved for me. The drink was still hot and felt like heaven on earth going down my throat. She was asleep in only moments. I couldn’t blame her.

I couldn’t remember ever driving on a highway for more than a few minutes before I met Sam. Now, I could say that I did it at least once a week. I drove for as long as I could handle, stopping to get food only a few times to save the money that we had stashed in the glove compartment. As the sun began to set behind me and headlights started to fill the empty space between me and other cars, I felt myself drifting off.

“What time is it?” I heard Annabeth ask through a yawn.

“Almost eight o’clock, but I haven’t reset the time yet,” I responded.

“You shouldn’t have let me sleep for so long,” she groaned.

“You were tired, I was rested, it was only fair.”

She was quiet for a moment.

“I got you a slice of pizza. It’s probably cold by now.” I pushed the sack toward her so she could see.

“Thanks. I can drive the rest of the way, though,” she said, sounding more awake.

“It’s fine, like you said, we’re almost there.”

“Yeah, but you don’t know where there is. Maps can only take you so far,” she objected. I had to admit, she knew how to win an argument.

“Alright,” I sighed and turned on my blinker to exit into the next rest area.

Figuring I wasn’t quite tired enough to fall asleep in a moving vehicle, I moved to the passenger’s seat when Annabeth took the wheel. For a long time, we sat in silence, but I was never very good at letting sleeping dogs lie.

“Why did you leave him?” I questioned.

She didn’t answer right away, letting the question hang in the air.

“It was the only way to get you out of there alive,” she explained at last.

“Sam said we could fight through it, we could’ve - we could’ve given it our best shot,” I stuttered. I took a breath to force down my anxiety.

Annabeth wrung her hands on the steering wheel. Neither of us looked each other in the eye.

“If we’d fought our way through, Sam would’ve made it, yes. Maybe - maybe - I would’ve been able to break through, but we wouldn’t have been able to protect you at the same time. They would’ve seen that and killed you at the first opportunity,” she said, her words becoming faster and sharper. I should’ve taken that as a warning to back off, but I didn’t.

“So you traded my life for Sam’s? Since when is that your choice to make?” I complained.

Outside my window, the roads became smaller, and the city crept into view.

“Since Sam put himself up for grabs,” she spat.

I couldn’t believe that she hadn’t seen the reprehension on Sam’s face when he’d given that offer.

“You know he only did that to stall, so we could come up with something reasonable.”

“Not we. Me,” she corrected. “He did it so I would come up with a plan. He knew that I wouldn’t be okay with him giving himself up like that, and he thought that I was hiding something from him that could be used instead. I told him he was the one who had to come up with the counteroffer, and he ignored me. That’s why I left him behind.” She turned her head to look at me for the first time during the argument.

“To punish him?”

I furrowed my brows at the implication. She looked back at the road.

“No, to save you.”

I waited for her to elaborate as we continued through the empty city streets. The sight still hadn’t become comfortable to me.

“This is war, Holly,” she reasoned, breaking the silence. “Most of us won’t make it to the other side. I certainly won’t, but you have to.”

“Because I’m the Flame or whatever,” I finished for her.

“Exactly,” she said with a certainty which implied I knew what that meant, that Sam had explained it to me, that anyone had, but, like always, I was painfully ignorant.

The landscape ahead began to open up again as we reached the coastline. I saw the mast of a large ship in the distance, breaking the horizon. The haze of the sea breeze blew closer until we were bumping over a gravel road that led to a wooden beach house in desperate need of a fresh coat of paint. The windows were dirty, and the yard was overgrown with tall grasses and weeds. Annabeth parked on a flat of gravel next to another beaten truck with dust covering the sides.

“We’re here,” she announced.

Luckily we didn’t have anything to bring in besides a half-eaten bag of chips and our old clothes because I didn’t have the energy to carry much else. The door was unlocked, so we walked right in. Annabeth took her shoes off at the door, so I followed suit.

The inside of the house was surprisingly spotless compared to the outside. There was a large table in the center of the living room that had stacks of papers and books, but even those were neatly organized. The living room led straight into a small kitchen with marble countertops and a small island surrounded by mismatched bar stools. It was a strange juxtaposition of elegant and used like someone had gotten halfway through remodeling it before they ran out of money. A hallway divided the space between the living room in the kitchen, running two ways.

Annabeth led me to the left where there were two doors and a set of rickety stairs. The upstairs was something close to an attic. The ceiling was slanted and there was scaffolding still in the corners, but the space was filled with bunks and dressers. A few of the bunks had people sleeping on them. One person waved when they looked up from a book. I waved politely back. A breeze brushed through the single window, sending a chill down my arm.

“You can take your pick. If there isn’t stuff on it, nobody’s staying there. The bathroom is downstairs, so is my room. The dressers have spare clothes, if you want them you have to put them in a bag or on your bed. You can leave stuff you don’t want in there too,” Annabeth explained.

She opened the drawer of a dresser to show a stack of bright orange T-shirts and several pairs of jeans. I set my dirty clothes on a bunk whose covers were straight and untouched.

“I’ll be downstairs.”

She left without another word. I rifled through the drawers until I found one with towels in it and grabbed one for a shower. I had to restrain myself from sprinting to the bathroom.

The water was hot, and I scrubbed my skin until it turned pink. I washed carefully around my wounds, cleaning them without causing too much pain. I rinsed my hair until it became the bright red that it was naturally instead of the murky orange that grease and mud made it seem like. I even shaved my legs with a razor I found near the sink so I could feel silky smooth once again.

After wrapping a fresh bandage around my arm, I changed into the large Indiana T-shirt and tied it behind my back so the bunching around my chest would obscure the fact that I wasn’t wearing a bra. I pulled on a pair of soft pajama pants that were definitely men’s, but I tied the waist so they wouldn’t fall off.

Annabeth was in the living room, pacing back and forth as she examined a wall littered with articles and maps. She wasn’t alone. Lounging in a seat on the other side of the room was someone I recognized, which didn’t happen often. He had blond cropped hair and a faded scar over his right eye. Luke Castellan was picking at the lint on the cuff of his sweater.

“Come on in, Holly,” he said, and I suddenly felt woefully underdressed. “Maybe you can help me convince Annabeth she’s being insane.”

“I’m not being insane, Luke.” She glared at him with her fierce grey eyes.

“Your plan is insane,” he amended, but Annabeth still wasn’t pleased.

She crossed her arms defiantly and stopped pacing across the floor so she could stare him down.

“I don’t see you coming up with any better ones,” she accused him.

“Oh yeah?” He sat up in his seat. “Here’s one: we all jump off a steep cliff. We’d die faster that way.”

Annabeth scoffed and rolled her eyes so hard they took her head with her and spun her body to face the wall again.

“What’s your plan?” I interjected.

She looked at me like she had only just noticed I was there.

“I’m going to free Percy Jackson,” she said. Luke laughed wryly.

“See? Simple. It’s not like she’s been trying to free him all year,” he commented with large gestures to punctuate the sarcasm that already dripped from his every syllable.

“He wasn’t distracted before,” Annabeth argued, and I was lost again.

“Distracted with an attack you mean, the very attack I sent you to prevent,” he said seriously.

“I’m calling this plan B,” she explained, completely unfazed by Luke’s disapproval.

“Don’t pretend you haven’t been planning this from the beginning.” He slouched back into the chair and shook his head at her. Annabeth didn’t even try to defend herself.

“You’ll be thanking me when we win,” she said instead. Luke clenched his jaw.

“If he doesn’t kill us all before then,” he warned with a flop of his wrist. “He’s dangerous, Annabeth, and he’s been imprisoned for months, so he’ll be angry on top of that.”

Annabeth glanced over a piece of paper with a messy handwritten scrawl. She studied it carefully.

“He’s only dangerous to his enemies,” she countered as a second thought to where her attention was on the piece of paper.

“He’s dangerous to anyone that looks at you the wrong way,” Luke said. I began to question

Annabeth’s plan myself when I saw a flash of something close to fear pass through Luke’s eyes. Even though it was much closer to apprehension, the sight made me queasy.

“So don’t look at me the wrong way,” Annabeth sighed.

There was a break in their arguing where Luke pressed his mouth into a thin line while he thought of another way he could convince her this was a horrible idea. The silence allowed the conversation to travel through my brain and bounce around a bit.

“Sorry, you’re looking for a prisoner?” I asked. Luke started,

“I doubt he’s a prisoner-”

“You know something,” Annabeth interrupted him, forgetting the words in exchange for focusing her attention on my answer. The way her eyes widened put more emphasis on my thought than it deserved.

“I don’t know, it’s just a dream I’ve been having,” I dismissed.

“A dream?” I expected her to laugh at me, berate me for getting her hopes up.

“Welcome to Montauk beach where dreams mean something. In this dream, you saw a prisoner?”

“Yeah,” I confirmed, still reeling from the rapid-fire of her inquiry.

“What did they look like?” she pushed.

“He was chained to a wall-”

“No, like what color was his hair? His eyes?” she jumped in.

“Jesus, Annabeth,” said Luke at her sudden change in mood.

“I have to be sure,” she berated him. The way she leaned toward me slightly as if to more quickly get her response pushed me to ramble on.

“It was really dark where he was being held, so his hair might have been black, and it was long, almost past his shoulders,” I explained.

“His eyes?” I remembered the churning shade that had been bathed in flames.

“Somewhere between green and blue,” I said. “They reminded me of the sea.”

“Percy,” she breathed like a balloon deflating in her chest. “You’re going to tell me everything you remember about where he’s being held.”

So I did. I told her everything I could remember about the chains around his wrist, the cart of tools, the conversations he had with his assaulters, the sudden absence of his usual guy. Annabeth took down every detail in writing. She scribbled in notebooks that were already mostly full and connected dots that I hadn’t thought to connect. I finished, and she grew silent, pouring over the new information and the old, committing it to memory forever.

“She’s not going to be talking for a while. You should get some rest,” Luke suggested after a minute of only the quiet rustling of pages.

“I’ll stay a little while longer,” I said. He nodded and wandered back down the hall. I heard a door open and shut again before I stood to look at the wall.

There were a lot of things I didn’t understand, some things in different languages, but I found my attention drawn to the piece of paper Annabeth had been studying so intently. It was pinned with a clear tack that bent slightly in the wall. A few stray holes where previous tacks had punctured circled the mark. The sheet had lines suggested it had been folded many times and a brown tint that looked like a coffee stain.

There were two sections. The bottom was a language that I didn’t understand, but the top was English. It was titled with a firm hand The Prophecy of the Souls, and scrawled in the same bold handwriting were eight lines of poetry.

**_Four clean souls will be inked by the night,_ **

**_One lost flame in flickering light,_ **

**_One savior marked with a purple seal._ **

**_Three Heroes prevail in death’s great field._ **

**_Two curses will shatter under his hand._ **

**_Two reapers shall reap forgotten land._ **

**_The One Flame will brave the souls they’ve scored,_ **

**_But nothing can save the owl nor the sword._ **

This was the prophecy, the reason everyone knew who I was, the reason Annabeth had so easily traded my life for Sam’s.

I didn’t sleep easy that night, but it didn’t stop my dreams from coming.

Percy Jackson talked to himself, to whatever he saw in the darkness. To me, this proved he was human. If isolation drove him insane just like the rest of us, maybe he wasn’t as dangerous as Luke thought.

He muttered about the stars, the sun, the sky, a wise girl with a beautiful smile. When he opened his eyes, I saw that his left was bloodshot, the green almost glowing against the red that surrounded it. Apparently a blowtorch to the eye angered it a little.

A visitor arrived as they always did. I was beginning to find a rhythm with these dreams as they happened more and more frequently.

I still couldn’t see his face, but by the high tone of his voice, I knew it was the younger one.

“Good morning,” he greeted.

“It’s morning?” Percy hummed. “Cool.”

“I think you’ll find today to be rather painful.” Percy smiled.

“Ooh, do tell,” he beckoned, and the younger man chuckled.

“I figured out what makes you invincible.” He crouched so he was at eye level with the prisoner who raised a single eyebrow. “You’ve got the curse of Achilles, don’t you?”

“You’re going to have to elaborate,” Percy feigned ignorance, but I could see the shift in his shoulders, bracing for anything.

“The curse of Achilles makes its bearer unkillable, stronger than ever before, the perfect warrior. Everywhere, except for one spot.”

Percy’s jaw shifted as he ground his teeth.

“Ah, I’m right. See, after I got my hands on you, I could see for myself that nothing was going to hurt you, so I got to thinking. Maybe it’s not the instrument. After that, it wasn’t difficult to put the pieces together.”

The telltale sounds of a knife being sharpened began to bounce around the corridor.

“Now, all I have to do is find your weak spot.”

I woke with a jolt as the young man began running his knife over every piece of exposed skin, searching for something he now knew he could find.

The attic was empty except for me, and the sun beamed in through the window, exposing the dust that floated around. I could hear voices from down below and a delicious smell wafted into my nose.

I crept down the steps while I wound my hair into a makeshift ponytail, which was more difficult than normal since I hadn’t brushed it after showering. There were several people milling around in the kitchen and living room area, more than had been present when I went to sleep.

“You must be Holly,” one girl called when she noticed me at the foot of the stairs. Her hair was a fiery red that mine only achieved in the peak of summer.

“I guess I am,” I answered, still a little groggy.

“Lovely to meet you, I’m Rachel Elizabeth Dare, but most people call me Red because of the hair and the initials. Do you want pancakes? There’s blueberry and chocolate chip,” she rambled.

“Please. Is there any coffee?” I asked, forcing myself to endure the crowd of people smashed into the small space around the island.

“Loads of it,” she told me, leading me to the pot. “I’m so glad you’re here. I’m just sick and tired of half-bloods.”

She jumped up to sit on the counter while I poured myself a mug of coffee. I remembered Annabeth using half-blood as another word for demigod.

“You’re not?” I asked her as I blew on the coffee.

“No, I’m just an oracle.” I gave her a look. “It means I’m mortal, but I occasionally have a prophecy to share with the group, just like you’re mortal, but everyone seems to think you’re their only hope to win the war.”

“It gets boring after a while,” I teased.

She had begun to grow on me since my first sip of coffee had settled in my stomach.

“I’m sure.” She turned to the rest of the room. “You know Annabeth and Luke. I wouldn’t interrupt them right now; they’re in war mode. The girl with the crop top trying to seduce the guy who looks very uncomfortable is Drew Tanaka, daughter of Aphrodite. The uncomfortable guy is Matthew Brown, son of Hephaestus. The weirdos arm wrestling are Margaret Mackintosh, daughter of Ares, and Liam Nelson, son of Hermes, Harvey, another son of Hephaestus, is the one refereeing,” she listed. “The two making the pancakes are Amaryllis and Hyacinth Grout, their twin daughters of Hecate. Everyone just calls them Mary and Haya, but their real names are super cool, so I thought you deserved to hear them at least once.”

One of the girls flipping pancakes shot her a look. Her skin was the color of chocolate and her eyes were impossibly deeper. Despite the harshness of her glance, her features were slightly softer than her sister’s.

There was a thud as the arm wrestling competition came to a close.

“Once again, Maggy destroys her competition,” Harvey bellowed. “What does it feel like to be such a loser?” he asked Liam with a sly smirk.

“What does it feel like to have my fist in your face?” he challenged, standing abruptly to his feet.

“I’m sure it’s sweeter than the jaws of defeat, but only you would know.”

Liam punched him in the face, and it started a cascade of fighting that soon involved all three of them. Rachel sighed from her spot on the counter.

“Every time,” she groaned.

Others began to watch the spectacle. Even Annabeth looked up from her conversation with Luke, where they had both been leaning over the table, staring intently at the stacks of research. I took a step back as one of them fell to the floor just in front of me and held my coffee close. One of the twins shrieked when a collision made her drop a pancake on the floor. She began to yell at them and shoved Liam into the opposite wall.

“Enough!” Annabeth ordered from the living room.

Everyone froze where they were. Even Drew, who hadn’t stopped her pursuit of Matthew turned her attention to the command.

“Margaret, stand up.” Margaret reluctantly got to her feet from where she had fallen to the floor.

“Haya, put down the spatula.” She obeyed.

“In case you have forgotten, we are in the middle of a war,” she lectured.

“We’re always in the middle of a war,” Drew grumbled with a roll of her eyes.

“So you should know how to behave by now is what I’m hearing,” Annabeth responded to Drew’s remark. “You will eat, you will clean up after yourselves, you will get dressed, you will report back here to be briefed on the next course of action, and you will do all of these things without arguing, fighting, or acting like spoiled brats, am I clear?”

“Yes, ma’am,” the room chorused. I found even myself mumbling the words.

“Good. You’re dismissed.” She took her seat once again, and everyone’s shoulders sagged.

I caught an almost proud look from look before Annabeth pushed a page towards him. The rest of breakfast was eaten in absolute silence while Luke and Annabeth discussed more details of the plan.

Once in the attic, the chatter started up again. They conversed about the state of affairs wherever they had traveled from. I gathered that most of them had been summoned early yesterday morning to the house while I had been asleep in the passenger’s seat. I found a change of clothes and pushed down my embarrassment of changing in front of so many strangers when I saw that nobody else shared the same concern.

Still, I changed quickly, pulling on a sports bra, fresh jeans, and one of the orange T-shirts that had been stacked in the dresser. I yanked on the jacket I always wore because it had big pockets and it was made of a stiff material that provided just a little bit of extra protection.

I slinked into the bathroom only to find Drew and Mary already inside. Drew was braiding Mary’s tight curls.

“Sorry, I’ll come back when you’re done,” I apologized.

“Nonsense,” Drew scoffed. “This’ll take ages. Do whatcha gotta do.”

“Thanks.”

I ruffled through the cabinets and drawers until I found a hairbrush and began to drag it through my hair. I really needed it cut, but there hadn’t been a lot of free time.

“Excuse me, ladies,” Harvey said while he pushed his way to the sink where he wet his toothbrush. He appeared to be the only one younger than me. While everyone else was somewhere in their mid to early twenties, he was probably closer to fifteen. He finished quickly and spat into the sink.

“I can braid your hair too for you, if you’d like,” Drew offered when she’d finished about three-quarters of Mary’s head. “It’s not just a vanity thing, you know, it’s a whole lot easier to slit throats when your hair’s not in your face.”

“That’s okay, we probably don’t have time,” I thanked her.

Mary scooted the stool she was sitting on back a foot and gestured to the floor in front of her.

“Sit, I’ll do it,” she insisted.

“Are you sure?” I asked.

“Yeah, it’ll give me something else to think about while she yanks the skin from my head.”

And that’s how I became a part of my first braid train. A stray few bumbled in and out of the bathroom while Mary worked my hair into a neat braid. Liam used the toilet without a second thought despite Drew’s disgust and washed his hands after she slapped his shoulder.

This was the kind of community that I’d hoped the group home would have before they sent me. After the year I had spent there without anyone daring to speak a word to me, I doubted it existed anymore.

Mary finished mine before Drew was done with hers, but I stayed to see it through. Sitting on the floor against the cabinets, I watched Drew’s nimble fingers bend through the last few inches of hair.

“Done,” she announced. Mary stood to examine it in the mirror. “Now we can slay our style and slay monsters.”

I giggled at the idea and we made our way to the living room.

The rest of the household trickled in shortly after with mouthfuls of pancakes and dressed in orange T-shirts. The winged horse danced across everyone’s chest under the block lettering that said Camp Half-Blood.

“I hope you all are fed, this is going to be a hectic few days,” Luke began once everyone had gathered and quieted. “As you know, Thalia has been mobilizing forces for some weeks now, and while we have been able to hold off her forces from the camp borders, if she decides to strike, we won’t be able to hold the line.”

He unfurled a large map, covering the entire table. I stood on tiptoe to see over the heads of others who had moved to see the map as well. The map was covered in different colored sharpies, lines, and drawings with X’s spaced throughout.

“She and the Huntresses are still in California trying to get New Rome on their side. Reyna is doing everything she can to slow down that process, but eventually, Thalia will get impatient. She’ll attack without the extra forces, and she’ll still win because her brother will follow her.”

“We need to weaken her before she gets that far,” Haya butted in. Luke nodded.

“Exactly. Harvey, that’s where you come in. You’ll need to take a team through the Labyrinth from the entrance here,” he pointed at an X somewhere in Maine, “To here.” He pointed at one in the heart of California.

“Why not the one in camp?” Harvey asked.

“It’s being guarded, not physically, but we’ve run tests to gauge the reaction and we’re positive there are eyes on it. The entrance in Maine is the closest that we’ve had success with.”

Annabeth shifted her weight from foot to foot and pinched her lip between her fingers. She looked like she was going over everything one more time, making as many plan B’s as she could accommodate in her brain.

“Margaret, you’ll go with Harvey. Ask Clarisse to spare as many Ares campers as she can without drawing notice.” He turned to the son of Hephaestus once more. “Once you’re done delivering them to California, we need you back here ASAP. You can use the camp entrance because stealth won’t matter as much. You’ll need to take Annabeth, Rachel, and the Grouts to Springfield, Illinois, so they can retrieve Sam Winchester. You’ll stay with them for as long as they need you.”

He pulled out a new map, smaller, but with no fewer markings littering the surface.

“The rest of us will gather in Wyoming,” he said, and what was previously calm listening, disintegrated into chaos.

“You’re not serious.”

“They kill us all.”

“We were meant to have retreated.”

The complaints came rolling in.

“You don’t have to win,” Annabeth interrupted them.

It still managed to surprise me that she was shown more respect than the general.

“You just have to hold your ground for as long as I say. If you stick to the trenches, don’t get too close to the Gate, and guard the points of entry, you’ll survive.” Her assurances did nothing to appease the crowd, but they bit back their remarks.

“Are there any questions?” Luke scanned the group, but nobody came forward. “Then you have your orders. Try not to die.”

Those around me dispersed, but I stayed behind to ask a question I already knew the answer to.

“Hey, Luke,” I started to catch his attention.

He looked up from the map he was folding back together.

“Yup.”

“What am I doing?” He looked back down at the table.

“You’re staying here. We can’t risk you getting hurt,” he explained, and I got brave.

“Because of some stupid prophecy?”

“We happen to fear prophecies in these parts,” he scolded with a firm stare.

“I can’t just stay behind,” I complained.

“You can, and you will.” He left me there, alone with my thoughts.

Around me, people prepared for battle, shoving weapons into duffle bags and stuffing protein bars into their pockets. None of them noticed me standing there, so I figured none of them would notice if I slipped out the door.

I took quick stock of what was in my pockets, a gun with no bullets and a knife that needed sharpening. There were a thousand other decisions I could’ve made in that moment, but I was tired of being useless. Spite is a wonderful motivator.

None of them followed when I opened the trunk of the Impala, a space I knew from experience was big enough to fit a body. I propped the trunk over my head, banking on the fact that Annabeth would be taking this car wherever she went. I stuck my jacket in the clasp that would lock me in so I had an easy escape.

I’d never been a stow-away before, but there was a first time for everything.


	3. Annabeth Saves My Bacon From Becoming Bacon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> this chapter follows the same structure of a pjo quest  
> monsters and mayhem, oh my!

Soon after making myself comfortable, I heard the engine rumble to life and the crunching of gravel under the tires. I amused myself with the weapons that were stowed underneath me until the car stopped.

The drive was short, so I figured they were stopping for gas, but I heard the creaking of four doors and several pairs of footsteps signaling that they were all leaving the car. I pushed open the trunk to see a field of green.

The car was parked on some grass next to a large white van that had a logo for Delphi’s Strawberry Service.

“Holly, what the hell?” I turned around to see that Annabeth had lagged behind, throwing a backpack over her shoulder.

“Hey, Annabeth,” I answered with my most innocent smile.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” I scrambled to find a fitting lie somewhere in my brain, but nothing came to surface, so I told the truth instead.

“Sorry, but I’m not just going to stay behind while everyone else risks their lives.” She sighed.

“We can’t afford to lose you,” she grumbled.

“Then you’ll just have to keep me alive.”

The certainty of my statement seemed to earn me a bit of Annabeth’s respect as she glared at me less menacingly and slammed the car door with less force than she could’ve.

“You will do everything I tell you the moment I tell you to do it.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I chanted.

“Follow me then.”

She trudged up a tall hill covered in grass that had been freshened from the spring air. Once we reached the crest, the landscape opened up below to expose cabins and fields. It was the kind of place that could’ve once been beautiful, but the trees sagged, the people sat alone, and the buildings stood like they were made of toothpicks.

I moved to follow Annabeth down the hill, but an invisible force stopped me like running into a brick wall. I yelped in pain and rubbed the spot on my head where I’d hit.

“Oh, right, I forgot,” Annabeth mumbled, and then more clearly, she stated, “I, Annabeth Chase, give you permission to enter camp.” I stood in place.

“You can come in now,” she told me.

I took a hesitant step forward, but the wall had disappeared.

“The heck?” I exclaimed once I had safely crossed the border.

“Only those with Olympian blood can cross the border, gods, goddesses, demigods. Everyone else gets stopped like you did. It was meant to be a safety measure before we ever thought that demigods would be the things we were running from.”

We passed a fire pit, circled in large wooden bleachers. The fire burned an eerie green.

Annabeth led me all the way to a large blue farmhouse at the bottom of a hill before she spoke again.

“That’s the Big House. We’ll stay in there until Harvey comes to get us.” She showed me up the rickety steps of the porch and into the main room of the house.

Rightly named, everything about the Big House was big. The ceilings were tall, the chairs wide, and the staircase dreadfully obvious. A ping pong table covered with scratch marks and empty Cheeto bags sat in the center of the room. Annabeth set her bag down on top of the mess.

“Keep following,” she beckoned when I paused to look at a tiger’s head nailed to the wall. I jumped when it snarled at me.

Annabeth pushed open a door into a large office covered in pictures of children in orange shirts. There was a small TV in the corner and a desk covered in office supplies. On top of it all, a thin layer of dust had settled. The sight seemed to do something to Annabeth. She stopped in the doorway, and her eyes shone with the threat of tears. Before I could process what could only be her grief, she took three determined steps into the room and snatched a string of leather from a stack of identical pieces.

“That’s yours. Keep track of it, you don’t get any replacements,” she demanded.

“What is it?” I asked her, slightly afraid she would dump me in the ocean for speaking.

“It’s a necklace. We used to add a bead at the end of each summer as a celebration for surviving another year. Nobody’s around anymore to make them, but if you live through this, I’ll let you design it,” she promised on our way up the large stairs.

The next floor was filled with cots. A few of them were already occupied by the other members of the party.

Rachel looked up to see who’d come in and beamed when she saw me.

“Holly! You sure know how to brighten a poor mortal’s day, don’t you?” She shot to her feet and wrapped me in an aggressive hug.

“Chill out, Red,” Annabeth laughed.

“I will not. Look at what they’re doing.” She pointed at the Grout twins who were taking turns making the other disappear. “This is ridiculous.”

“That is ridiculous,” I agreed.

“Careful, Holly. Keep that up and I’ll fall in love with you,” she said with a straight face.

I laughed while she dragged me to the cot next to her own and made me sit across from her and chat about anything and everything that came into my mind.

It took three days for Harvey to arrive at camp. For those three days, I was the most normal I had been in a long time. I sang campfire songs with the other campers that had sought refuge behind the magical borders, and I grumbled about the state of the showers with anyone who would listen. I also learned about the old camp director. How he’d owned the office that nobody dared touch, and how he’d faded away when The Shift began. Up until that day, he had been nearly immortal, blessed to live for as long as demigods needed him. I guess they stopped needing him. I wasn’t supposed to bring this up with Annabeth.

Annabeth was sparring with me in the arena as she had been as often as she could convince me to. I was losing, sweating like a pig in the afternoon sun, and Annabeth was unrelenting. Even when I had fallen to the ground, she continued to press me.

That’s when a tree nymph stumbled into the session. Annabeth stopped throwing slashes at me with her sword, and that’s how I knew something had happened.

“Sorry to interrupt,” the nymph said shily. She picked at a leaf in her hair. “It’s just, Harvey sent me to get you. He said to meet him by Zeus’s fist.”

“Thanks,” Annabeth replied.

She was far less out of breath than I was, and I tried not to be offended by it. I reasoned that she had been training her whole life, and I had only just begun, but the thought process just brought me to question whether I was the Flame they were looking for. Annabeth tied the drakon bone sword next to her dagger on her belt and helped me to my feet.

“Time to go then?” I panted.

“Yup, let’s go get the others.”

Annabeth had packed a go-bag on our first day that contained everything she thought we’d need to survive. I followed the rest of my team to a pile of rocks that for some reason had been named Zeus’s fist. I decided not to ask questions. Leaning up against one of the larger boulders was Harvey. He looked like he had seen better days.

“Let’s go, the quicker we leave, the quicker we get there,” he said, motioning for us to enter a dark space between two boulders.

It wasn’t the strangest thing I’d been asked to do, so I followed Rachel into the darkness. Harvey messed with a sphere, twisting the gears at every turn, consulting it on where to go next. He would check with Rachel who I’d been told could see things in the Labyrinth more clearly. The Grouts stayed behind me, Haya holding my hand while I held Annabeth’s in front of me. If we weren’t wandering through an ancient maze built to destroy whoever entered it, the matching shirts and the train of hand-holding would paint a pretty funny picture.

A shrill scream echoed from somewhere to our right. The second we looked, a passageway grew, covered in vines and moss. I heard water dripping somewhere in the darkness.

“Somebody help me!” the voice called out again.

“Ignore it,” Annabeth commanded. “Where next?”

Harvey twisted the metal gears around and waited for them to clank in response.

“We need to go east.”

Rachel stared ahead. In one direction, a staircase wound down into the earth, and in the other, a purple light illuminated the slime on the walls.

“We take the stairs,” she said, leading the line towards the brick.

The stairs wound down into a cold mist, but we didn’t make it far enough to see what was at the bottom. Underneath our feet, the staircase began to coil up, steps disappearing into the wall. Rachel jumped back and tripped on a loose brick, falling to the floor. Since we were holding hands, she yanked the rest of us down with her. She scrambled backward away from the crack that sought to crush us with the steps.

Harvey broke himself free of the line and sprinted up the steps. When he reached the back of the line, he dragged Mary to her feet. Haya muttered spells that formed electric balls in her hands. She threw them at the wall, electricity shattering across the surface.

“Take my hand!” Annabeth yelled at Rachel, who could do nothing but stumble backward on all fours.

She threw her hand out to Annabeth, and she caught it in the air. The crack that had been eating the staircase got a hold of Rachel’s shoe. Annabeth pulled with all her might to have her released, but it didn’t budge.

“Hang on!” I hollered, sliding across the uneven surface, trying to keep my balance as the bricks rippled underneath me.

I fiddled with the laces on Rachel’s shoe until they gave way. I pulled it off only for Rachel to be yanked back to the solid surface, her shoe gone forever. I sprinted to catch up and collapsed in the corridor where we began.

Gasping for breath, we watched the brick staircase stack on top of itself to form a seamless wall where the entrance had been.

“Right,” Rachel panted. “Plan B then.”

We helped each other to our feet and dusted off as much of the mud we’d attracted as we bothered to while Rachel searched for another option.

“Help us!” the old voice screeched again.

Nobody dared react.

“Through here,” Rachel said, directing us through an archway that hadn’t been there before.

On the other side, there was a large room with several other identical looking exits and a stained glass ceiling that let the slightest bit of sunlight in. We spaced out cautiously, ready to be attacked, but nothing appeared.

Rachel didn’t stop walking for a second, simply leading us through a doorway without hesitation. The hall began to shrink again until it was as small as the one we’d been walking through previously. Then it continued to shrink, smaller and smaller. It closed in to touch our shoulders, lowered to the top of our heads, then got narrower so we had to walk sideways.

“Are you sure about this Red? I’m feeling a little cramped,” Mary complained from somewhere behind me.

I wanted to agree, but found it hard to even take a breath.

“Just...a little...longer,” came the labored reply.

Finally, we heard her gasp for breath and a couple of stuttered footsteps as the hall opened up again into a new room. This one had a terrace with twin staircases that led down to another level like a ballroom, and we were waiting to be introduced.

“Save me, please!” the voice called, much closer this time.

We crouched down to see what was over the edge.

“Would you stop that?” A gruff voice asked.

“I don’t see you catching us any dinner,” the other responded with just as much annoyance.

I inched a twitch forward, and suddenly I could see the figures clearly. They sat on either side of a roaring flame, one stoking it with a stick, and the other using it to warm his feet. They were both giant, at least eight feet tall, with arms the size of boars. In the center of their meaty heads, they each had one eye, squinty and bloodshot.

“Cyclops,” Annabeth whispered, the words barely forming.

We all looked to her for what to do next, but she only watched the creatures argue.

“Do you smell that?” one of the creatures asked.

“Your feet? You’re stinking up the fire, you brute.”

“No, I smell half-blood.”

Our party froze. We were so still, so silent, we could hear the sniffing of the cyclops down below, catching the scent of our blood.

“You always smell half-blood,” the other dismissed out of hand.

“I’m serious this time, smell it.”

We glanced at each other to see if anyone had any brilliant ideas. Rachel looked back at where we came in, but the way had closed off without any trace that it had been there at all.

“I don’t-” Harvey’s sphere clicked a gear.

There was a horrible moment where nothing happened, then a flaming cannonball came soaring into the center of our huddle.

“Scatter!” Annabeth yelled, no longer worried about the noise, and we each threw ourselves in different directions so the cannonball came crashing down in the center, sending pieces of concrete flying.

A small piece hit me square in the back, in the soft tissue between my shoulder blades, and I cried out in pain. I heard a deep laugh come from somewhere to my left, but I was still getting my bearings. Harvey hauled me to my feet, which was enough for me to come back to my senses. I grabbed the dagger attached to my belt and held it out in front of me.

The cyclops had climbed both sides of the stairs, surrounding us, backing us slowly up to the hole their cannonball had created in the terrace.

“Now would be a great time for a plan, Annabeth,” Harvey teased with his own dagger poised to defend himself.

“I’m working on it,” she shouted back.

“Annabeth Chase, wisdom’s daughter. I’ve heard so much about you,” the cyclops with bare feet leered. “I have to say, I thought you’d be taller.”

“Yeah, well, I thought you’d be cleaner, I guess we’re both disappointed.”

I didn’t think this was the time to start making jokes, and my opinion was only strengthened when the cyclops snarled and slashed its arm out to grab Annabeth. She dodged with the skill of an experienced soldier, and stumbled along the edge of the chasm. A few loose pebbles clattered to the floor so far below. She watched them fall and smirked.

“Careful,” she said. “If we fall our bones will break, shatter even.”

“You should be happy we’re going to give you such a quick death, half-blood,” he chided.

I could hear my heart pounding in my eardrums.

Behind her back, Annabeth motioned for us to move behind her, so the hole was between us and her. The Grouts shared a glance and moved to either side of Annabeth with slow movement. The barefoot beast kept its attention on her while the other stalked us to the other side.

“I’m just worried about you. If our bones are in so many pieces, it’ll take you ages to get them out.” We shifted so that we could no longer see Annabeth at all. “Wouldn’t you much rather be able to eat out meat right off of the bone? When’s the last time you’ve really treated yourself?”

The monster in front of me sharpened its teeth with a piece of metal. My feet bounced, urging me to run, but I stayed put.

“It’s been ages,” my cyclops answered Annabeth instead of his brother.

“Right,” Annabeth assented. “Come on, you guys deserve it.”

“She’s right, we should just grab them right here,” the monster chuckled.

His meaty hand lurched forward to wrap around my waist, so out of nothing but instinct, I dropped to the ground. Instead of bending down to grab me, he grasped at the air where I had been and looked longingly down the hole. He took two large steps over where I was laying on the ground.

I frantically rolled away to avoid his massive feet, and he jumped over the edge. I sat up and looked at the other.

The Grouts were the only ones still standing, holding their hands up and their heads bowed in concentration. I remembered how they could make each other disappear, make a twenty-dollar bill appear where it hadn’t been before, only for it to vanish when a victim reached out for it, and I wondered what the monsters were seeing.

There wasn’t a lot of time to think it over as Annabeth jumped over the edge just moments after the first cyclops. She landed on the creature's back, and it began to throw her around fiercely. She held on, but she didn’t have a strong enough grip to stab the monster.

“Help me!” it began to yell in the same high-pitched voice as before.

The sound was enough to distract the Grouts and let the barefoot cyclops snap out of his trance.

He lunged for Mary, but I hurled my dagger at his head. What was meant to be a heroic feat turned into a pitiful attempt as the weapon merely bounced off and fell down the hole.

Weaponless, I had done nothing but grab its attention, and as it set its eyes on me, it licked its chapped lips and sneered.

This time, I ran.

I sprinted down the steps only for it to jump over the railing and land in front of me once again. I ducked down and ran between its legs, which only angered it farther. I sprinted onto a pile of rubble. The monster crashed his hand through the foundation. The wood beneath my feet splintered to pieces. I landed on my back in a sea of broken wood. I heard a crunching sound and looked up to see the cyclops stalking towards me like I was already dead.

I dragged myself backward away from his hungry gaze. I stumbled to stand, only to fall back onto my butt when my ankle gave out. I grappled for a piece of wood and threw it at the monster’s head. He batted it away without a second thought.

“Time’s up, little mortal,” he hissed with the breath of a thousand rotten eggs.

He grabbed me by the leg and lifted me into the air. I felt all the blood rush to my head as I dangled upside down. Swaying back and forth, I could make out my friends battling the other.

Annabeth still clung to its back, but her sword was gone.

The cyclops tied a rope around my feet, bound my hands, and hung me from a spit. As I struggled, I saw Haya dangling next to me, unconscious with a welt on her forehead that had already begun to turn an ugly shade of green.

A spark from the flame kissed my shoulder, lighting a searing pain across the skin. I heard my flesh sizzle. I’m not sure how she did it, all my energy was focused on lifting my body above the ever-growing flame, but not long after the monster left me to cook, did Annabeth return to douse the flames with a flip of a switch.

They flickered to a dim glow before going out completely. The blood still sloshed in my head more than it should, and Haya’s bump didn’t look much better. Worst of all, we were still hanging upside down like hunted pheasants.

“Right, so who can climb?” I heard Rachel ask through labored breaths.

The next thing I knew, Annabeth was dangling from her knees next to me and cutting my hands free. She helped me to grab the metal bar before cutting my feet as well. We worked together to haul Haya up and lower her into Mary and Rachel’s arms.

When I jumped to the ground, I was rudely reminded of the beating my ankle had taken, and I collapsed to the floor with a yelp.

“Are you okay?” Annabeth asked, her eyebrows fused together with concern.

“Yeah, it’s just my ankle,” I explained.

“Can you walk?” She helped me to my feet.

I tested the weight, and while it hurt, I could safely limp without support.

“Yeah,” I winced.

“Good. Give Haya some ambrosia,” she ordered the others. “If she doesn’t wake up soon, we’ll have to carry her. We can’t afford to lose any time.”

Harvey dug through his bag and retrieved a plastic bag full of golden squares. These had also been explained to me in the days before Harvey arrived. At that moment, balancing on one foot, I wished that I could eat them like the demigods. I could use the healing properties.

They forced a square into her mouth and waited for it to melt on her tongue. The green on her bump dulled to a less aggressive shade, and some of the color returned to her face. A few tense moments later, and she blearily opened her eyes.

“Oh, thank the gods,” Mary exclaimed and pulled her to a standing position. Haya wobbled and held a hand to her head, but she didn’t pass out, so we took that as a green light to continue.

Harvey handed me my dagger and twisted the gears of the sphere. It clattered around for a moment before telling us which way to go. Rachel navigated the best corridor, and we were on our way through a brand new dark tunnel.

I limped behind Annabeth, whose pace remained unchanged. Every once in a while I had to bite my tongue and jog to catch up. Nobody spoke for fear of attracting another horror show until Harvey broke the silence.

“It should be really close now,” he said.

We had entered a greenhouse-style room that was humid and hot. Vines stretched up and down the walls along with strange plants that wound around each other, reaching for any stray beam of light they could grasp.

“There.” Rachel pointed to the source of the light.

It looked like the underside of a manhole cover, letting in hints of light. A ladder made entirely of metal bars climbed up the wall beside it.

We hurried towards it, padding over moss and through the quiet of the brush. The plants drooped tall over our heads like a large forest, buzzing with desire.

Mary screamed.

I whipped my head around to see her being dragged away by the ankle, a vine wrapped tightly around her.

“Mary!” Haya pleaded and unsheathed her sword.

She began to mercilessly hack at the vine until she broke free and they stumbled to their feet. Every other plant in the room turned toward us, seeking revenge. We scrambled for the ladder.

Harvey was the first one up. He pushed the manhole cover out of place and the sunlight shone brilliantly into the darkness. He reached down to help Haya through while Annabeth hacked at the vines threatening to consume us.

Rachel beat at them with a stick as she waited for Mary to climb the ladder.

A firm branch grabbed my bad ankle, eliciting a cry of pain. Rachel came to my aid and began to beat it with her stick.

“Go! Get! Nobody likes you, you piece of shit!” she scolded it with every smack.

“Rachel! Go up, I’ve got it,” Annabeth ordered, and Rachel clambered up the ladder as a vine twisted around the rungs, chasing her into the sunlight.

With a single slash, Annabeth freed me from the vines that had continued to climb up my leg. She practically lifted me onto the ladder and pushed me upwards.

Once out, I looked back down to see that the vines had grabbed onto her arm, keeping her from cutting them down.

Haya mumbled something foreign under her breath, and a ball of electricity formed. She shot it at the vines that were swallowing Annabeth, and they exploded away.

Annabeth didn’t hesitate.

She hurried up the ladder, the vines hot on her tail, and she slammed the cover down before they could follow her into the real world.

We collapsed onto our backs to try and let our breathing get back under control when an angry honk sounded from just beside us. A taxi cab idled behind us, and we scrambled to get out of the street, finding refuge on a bus stop bench. Annabeth opened the newspaper box and fished one out.

“It’s been two days,” she announced.

“Two days? That can’t be,” I exclaimed when nobody else commented.

“Time is different in the Labyrinth. You could live in there for a year and leave to find that no time has passed, or you could be in there for a couple of hours and have two days fly by,” Harvey explained with a faraway look in his eyes.

“Which just makes it more pressing that we find Sam now,” Annabeth worried. “We don’t have any time to waste, so eat a protein bar, and let’s find that hotel.”

It was easy to do as you were told when Annabeth was the one giving orders. She didn’t leave a lot of room for disobedience.

We took a taxi to the hotel, all six of us cramming into the backseat. The driver hadn’t wanted us to sit on each other’s laps, but Annabeth slipped him a few large bills, and he didn’t offer any further protests. When he dropped us off at the front door, Annabeth paid him in cash and examined the empty parking lot.

The lobby was empty as well. Chairs weren’t pushed in and half-eaten meals sat on their plates.

“They must’ve left in a hurry,” Mary noticed.

Our silence was our agreement. We entered the lounge where we’d lost Sam to the demon and found it also abandoned. The bodies of the demons we’d killed still sprawled on the floor where they had fallen.

“Is this where you last saw him?” Haya wondered. Her voice still trembled a bit from the hit she had taken.

“Yeah,” I answered.

“Then we’ll need something he touched and both of your participation for the spell,” Mary finished.

Annabeth brought a knife out from her bag. It was one I recognized, with a jagged edge and strange engravings along the blade. This was the knife that killed demons. The Grouts sat us in a circle, held our hands, had us focus on the memories of that night, and they began to chant something ancient. I tried not to let the thoughts of how ridiculous this was distract me from remembering the look on Sam’s face when he saw Annabeth lift the hilt of her sword over his head. I forced myself to picture him falling to the floor, being dragged away by men with black eyes while Dean had his head stitched back on.

Mary gasped, and I opened my eyes to see what she had learned.

“He’s in Waukegan,” she blurted, and we were moving again.


	4. We Snatch a Sam

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> exactly what the title says  
> there is character death in this chapter  
> there are some implications towards some of the events in pjo the last olympian, and well, how to make greek fire isn't the worst thing in my search history...

Annabeth could do a lot of things. She was skilled that way. She could give orders, plan wars, make decisions nobody else would. Now that we were crunched for time and two hundred miles away from where Sam was being held, I learned that she could also hotwire a car in three seconds flat.

She had trouble finding a van that could fit all six of us, so she eventually settled for a truck that fit four on the inside while Haya and I sat on the flatbed.

The bouncing of the truck only got faster when we got onto the highway. Haya looked just about ready to throw up over the side. Her face was green, and she stared at the tree line with laser focus.

After it became obvious to me that I wasn’t going to be sleeping any time soon, I set to work wrapping my ankle. It made me nervous to use so much of the gauze that I had packed, but I ignored the tingling sensation that kept telling me to save it when I saw how swollen it had become.

I sighed and leaned back against the side of the truck. When I let myself rest my eyes, I thought I should savor this moment of quiet.

A screeching gust of wind came from the sky, and I opened my eyes to see.

The sun was blocked by an angry cloud that hadn’t been there before. It shifted and growled with lightning. The wind picked up until it was pulling at my face. I could’ve sworn I saw the air wrap itself into a horse before barreling into the truck.

I decided to trust my eyes because logic had no place in this world.

“Annabeth!” I called while pulling open the window that divided them from me and Haya.

The truck rattled, and this time, Haya did vomit. She leaned over the deck and hurled. The sound almost made me follow her. I heard Annabeth curse over the roaring wind.

The truck began to pick up speed.

“What are they?” I yelled but my voice sounded like a whisper as it was carried away by the air whipping around me.

“Venti!” Mary hollered back from the back seat. “They’re wind spirits!”

I heard the engine roar under the pressure of Annabeth’s foot. We were soaring now, but the venti had yet to be discouraged. They lunged at the truck, shoving it from side to side. Haya threw up again, and the chunks blew away into the storm behind us.

Amidst the darkness, the hazy outline of a stallion galloped towards us. It’s mane billowing with lightning, it’s eyes pulsing with electricity, this had to be more than a wind spirit. The horse moved like the breeze, and before I could blink, it was side by side with the truck, cantering next to Annabeth in the driver’s seat.

The truck lurched forward again as she floored the gas pedal. I could smell the strain of the tires. The wind only picked up its pace. The giant horse reared up and let its front hooves come crashing down on the side of the truck. The wind around us and the sheer velocity Annabeth had forced from the engine sent us tumbling through the air.

The truck doubled over itself, sending me and Haya tumbling to the ground.

I landed hard on the pavement, but Haya managed to cushion her fall with a quickly casted spell.

Still flipping over in circles, the car rolled into the ditch and crashed upside down. The windows were shattered and the entire body dented beyond repair. Smoke billowed from the engine. Nobody moved from inside. Haya and I shared a glance before launching to our feet, defying the wind that still pushed around us.

“Mary!” she hollered.

I ignored the blood on my hands as I ripped open the car door.

Annabeth groaned when I jostled her shoulder. A gash on her forehead dripped blood down the side of her face. Beside her, Rachel’s airbag had activated, and she seemed dazed and cut up, but alive.

Haya dragged Mary out of the back. Harvey was soon to follow, all coughing from the fumes of smoke coming from the engine.

“We need to run!” Annabeth screamed.

A small fire lit from the hood of the car, and we all scrambled to our feet, sprinting against the wind. I didn’t have the luxury to feel the throbbing of my ankle until the car exploded behind us and the shock wave sent us all tumbling to the ground.

Before long, the winds were on us again.

Annabeth slashed at them with her sword, but they dissipated before she could make contact. A lightning bolt broke the ground in front of me, and I hurdled myself back.

"Damnit!" I heard Annabeth yell.

"That's no wind spirit!" Harvey hollered. 

"It's Tempus," she groaned.

A venti wound itself into a tornado, and I grabbed a bush to hold my ground.

Mary wasn’t so lucky, and she was whipped into the storm, winding around the eye. I could see her gasping for breath, her braids flapping recklessly.

“Let her go!” Haya hollered, throwing balls of electricity at the storm. They did nothing but egg it on.

To my right, Annabeth made a well-timed stab and a single spirit fell into golden dust. She backed up to regain her awareness and noticed the woods behind her.

I hauled myself to my feet and hacked at the nearest spirit, which had completely forgotten about me until I angered it. It crashed into my abdomen, knocking the breath out of my lungs. It hung there for a moment, so I stabbed the mess of air with all the might I had left. The storm fell apart by a sheer stroke of luck.

I fell to my knees, gasping for air. I heard a crash and looked up to see where it came from.

I saw Mary collapsed on the ground, her face pale and sickly, dementing her warm chocolate skin. Her eyes remained open and blank, her mouth agape like she was still gasping for breath.

Haya knelt beside her, sobbing. She moved a braid carefully out of her face and began to shake her shoulders.

“To the woods!” I heard Annabeth yell.

When Haya didn’t move from her sister’s side, Annabeth ran to her, slashing at the spirits that just kept coming.

“Haya, she’s gone. You won’t be doing anything for her by dying at her side. Let’s move,” she urged. H

aya struggled to her feet. We ran for the woods. I limped after them all, and I let the tears fall from my face. Haya’s sobs were louder than the wind that followed us still, but suddenly, we weren’t alone.

Dozens of dryads circled us. They kept the wind at bay with the strength of a tree that will not sway until they gave up, and quiet befell us all. The sun returned to taunt us with glints through the canopy of the forest.

We huddled on the ground in a pile of pain and exhaustion. Annabeth held Haya in her arms, soothed her with all the words she could manage until her breathing evened out.

“We have to keep going,” Haya declared, her voice breaking. The party was silent until Rachel spoke up.

“She’s right. We don’t have a lot of time. They could be killing him as we speak,” she said.

We each stood in turn, brushing the dirt from our pants. We thanked the dryads before wandering back to the truck at the side of the road. The shell had remained intact, but shards of shrapnel lay scattered amongst the grass.

“We’ll need a new ride,” Harvey said. He looked sadly at the car and kicked a piece of glass.

“In the middle of the highway?” I complained.

“We could hitchhike,” Haya offered.

“Looking like this?” Rachel argued, gesturing to the blood and tattered clothing that adorned each of us.

“I’ll use the Mist. They’ll see whatever they want to see,” she explained.

And that’s how I ended up on the side of the highway, covered in blood, leaning against Rachel for support while Annabeth stuck her thumb out with a smile. We walked as we waited. The farther we were from the wreckage the better.

Each car that passed us dampened our moods. Haya’s eyes drooped deeper with each exertion of her powers. Finally, a boxy RV stopped for us. An old woman with snowy white hair and an entire outfit from REI opened the door for us.

“You kiddos need a lift?” she hooted.

“Yeah,” Annabeth cheered. “We’re trying to get to Waukegan, but our bus ditched us on accident.”

“Oh, poor things, come on in, we’ll take you as far as you need.” She smiled, showing off a large gap between her two front teeth.

We piled into the back where there were a couple of cots and a kitchen set. Annabeth took the seat closest to the driver’s, which I quickly learned was a very smart decision. Annabeth was a fantastic liar.

“So, where are you guys headed?” she chatted.

“Milwaukee. We’ve got grandkids there. We’re going to take ‘em for a camping trip,” the woman replied. “Donald is going to teach ‘em how to fish, arentcha Don?”

“I’m gonna do my best,” he filled in.

“That sounds lovely. Have you ever been to Washington Island?” Annabeth conversed.

“No, I can’t say we have.”

“It’s just off of the peninsula. It’s got wonderful parks and ferry rides to some of the smaller islands. I went there once with my dad, and I had the best time.” I couldn’t be sure that was a lie, but as far as I knew, her dad hadn’t been in the picture for decades.

I stopped listening to her skillful chatter and propped my ankle up onto the cot I was sitting on. Rachel adjusted so I was resting it on her lap, and I smiled my thanks. Haya sat on the cot opposite, next to Harvey who fiddled with his sphere. Her eyebrows were furrowed together, no doubt to keep the Mist shrouded over us. The bump on her head had gone down significantly, but it left an angry bruise in its place. Her face was softer than her sister’s, but it still reminded me of the blank stare Mary had given me.

I could still see her braids tied in place with bright pink and purple hair bands. The camp necklace that dangled from her neck. All the signs of a life that had been.

I must’ve dozed off because the next thing I knew Rachel was shaking me awake.

“It was lovely meeting you, Lisa,” the old woman told Annabeth.

“Great meeting you as well. Enjoy Milwaukee,” she smiled.

“Enjoy Waukegan.”

Annabeth laughed in response and waved at the RV as it pulled away.

They had left us at a gas station with a broken liquor sign. It flashed LIQ R in a bright red font. The sun was still high in the sky, shining brightly down on our heads. I squinted angrily at it, which only proved to me that I was growing a sunburn on my nose.

“Now what?” Rachel sighed. Her hair had lost its bounce, and instead, it flopped sadly from its ponytail.

“We take a much-needed intermission,” Annabeth said.

She led us into the gas station where the clerk stared at us with wide eyes. He reached for the phone, but Annabeth passed him a few gold coins, and he put it back on the receiver. Luckily, there was no one else in the building to require a bribe.

The bathrooms were in the back past a wall of Doritos. Harvey was obviously uncomfortable that Annabeth had dragged him into the girls restroom with the rest of us, but she’d insisted that we shouldn’t split up, and he thought better than to argue with her.

The demigods popped ambrosia squares and taped up wounds that the food didn’t heal right away. Rachel cleaned the cuts on her face from the car crash, and I did my best to rinse the gravel out of the cuts on my hands and elbows. I went to remove my shirt and winced when the space between my shoulders shouted it’s complaint.

“That doesn’t look good,” Rachel noticed.

“It’s from the cannonball,” I explained through gritted teeth.

“I’ll be right back.”

She rushed out of the bathroom and came back with a bottle of antiseptic.

“This is going to hurt like a bitch,” she warned.

I bit down hard to prepare myself but still groaned in pain when the liquid hissed over my back. I wasn’t sure if my eyes were squeezed shut, or my vision had gone black, but I definitely couldn’t see anything. She taped some bandaging onto the wound, and I distracted myself by washing the blood out of my shirt.

Once we had cleaned up to the best of our ability, patched up our wounds, blow-dried our clothes, taken turns in the two stalls, and looted the gas station for snacks and pain pills, we were on our way. Looking a bit more presentable, we went into the McDonald’s next door and ordered enough food to make it onto a horrible documentary about obesity.

“When you guys did the locator spell, did you get anything more specific than Waukegan?” Harvey asked, gesturing with a soggy fry.

“No, that would’ve required something more complex. We would’ve needed blood or something,” Haya mumbled.

“Right.”

I slurped at the bottom of my milkshake. Annabeth pushed some of the empty wrappers aside so she could fit her laptop on the table.

“You brought your laptop?” Harvey wondered.

“Of course I did.” She began clacking at the keys.

“Well, alright then, Mary Poppins,” he grumbled, dunking a chicken nugget into the nearest ketchup.

“We just have to think like a Knight of Hell,” she explained.

The light of the screen lit up her face an iridescent blue.

“Last time it was that hotel,” I started. Annabeth waited for me to continue. “So it’s probably somewhere obvious, somewhere with a lot of space and all the luxuries he wants.”

“But it would also have to be somewhere that he could guard pretty easily,” Rachel cut in.

“Yeah,” I confirmed, and she nodded while picking at the pickle on her napkin.

“I was just thinking,” she said. “My dad is the same way. He likes the luxury and the protection. He owns a yacht in a marina here.”

We finished our food, and Annabeth found directions on her laptop to the marina. The throbbing of my ankle kicked up again since my adrenaline had finally quieted, but the best thing about a small town in the middle of nowhere was that nothing was that far from a McDonald’s.

The walk took maybe fifteen minutes, and we were stumbling into the reception of the yachting club. The floors were hardwood without a single deformity. I felt blasphemous walking across them with my dirty shoes. Rachel sauntered with pride despite the fact that she had lost her shoe back in the Labyrinth.

“Excuse me, this area is for members only,” the receptionist scolded with her nose turned up at the sight of us.

“Don’t worry, they’re with me,” Rachel assured her with a grin.

“And who might you be?”

“I’m Rachel Elizabeth Dare. My father said I could use one of his yachts for a few days. Here’s his card.”

She passed over a piece of plastic that glittered in the light. The woman typed the information into the computer before plastering on a large smile.

“Of course, Miss Dare. My apologies for the confusion, is there anything else I can help you with?”

“Actually, yes. See, I was supposed to meet another group, but I ran into some trouble getting here, and I haven’t heard from them. Do you mind checking to see if he left the marina?” The receptionist looked ready to object, but Rachel jumped in, “My father and I would be really grateful for the help.”

The woman smiled.

“Of course, can I have a name?” Annabeth stepped forward.

“It’ll be August Levens,” she recited. The woman looked at the computer screen and continued clicking through the database.

“Here he is, he left a few days ago, the boat’s GPS says he’s rather far from the coastline, but if you go north, you shouldn’t miss him.”

“Thank you,” Rachel called as we rushed to the docks.

Rachel led us down the wooden planks until we reached where the docks were further spaced. She showed us to the largest boat at the end of the line. The murky water bobbed around its hull. She pulled us onto the boat one by one and untied it from the dock with an experienced hand. We settled on the benches and felt the kind ocean breeze while Rachel took to the wheel. The boat waded out of the marina at a slow crawl until we crossed the buoy line, and she began to pick up speed.

Annabeth closed her eyes and turned her face into the breeze. Her mouth turned up into a small smile as she breathed in the salty air. I tried following her example and taking this moment to relax, but the pains all over my body wouldn’t allow it. They demanded to be felt. Once the top of the large boat became visible over the horizon, Rachel slowed us to a stop and emerged from the small room with all the confusing buttons.

“What’s the plan, chief?” she asked Annabeth whose peace had left as wordlessly as it had appeared.

“Take me to the engine room.”

She and Haya began mixing petroleum and canola oil while Haya muttered something magical. They bottled the substance into old water bottles and a washed-out peanut butter jar, one for each of us. It glowed a hideous green.

“Feel like old times yet?” Annabeth remarked when she handed Rachel her bottle.

“Almost,” she teased in return. “Here’s to making it back alive.”

Getting to the boat was the easy part.

We piled into a life raft and paddled through the harsh waves. Haya kept us shrouded in a veil of Mist until we reached the side of the ship.

This was the hard part.

Annabeth unwound a rope she had brought from the ship and boosted herself on Harvey’s shoulders so she could reach the ring that docked the boat. She stumbled as she tied a firm knot. Bit by bit, she hoisted herself to the ring, the rope dangling below. The first porthole was five feet from the ring. She hooked her foot and stretched as far as she could reach, her finger barely grazing the edge. She shifted her foot so she was balancing on the narrow piece of metal that held the ring to the boat. She grunted as she thrusted herself to her tiptoes and yanked the porthole open.

Her balance wavered, so she stuck her foot in the ring once again, pulling the rope up and winding around the open window. She pulled herself up like I’d seen her do a hundred times on the rock climbing wall and shimmied through the small hole.

Harvey and I followed her in. Haya and Rachel continued to paddle towards the front. They were our distraction.

We’d landed in a small cabin with a demon reading a magazine. Annabeth ran him through with her sword, clasping a hand over his mouth to muffle his cries, all before he could run to notify more.

She scanned the hall.

“It’s clear. Set your watch,” she told Harvey.

With a click, his timer started to count down ten minutes. Annabeth guessed it would take twelve for security to figure out what was happening, and she gave two minutes for error.

Annabeth raced up a staircase. Harvey and I wound through the corridors. I followed him down a metal staircase into the bottom level of the ship.

“It should be somewhere down here,” he muttered.

“You there!” a shout came from down the hall.

We turned to see three large men walking quickly towards us. We drew our weapons. Harvey managed to pick one off before getting nearly shish kabobed by the blade of a second. I drove my dagger into its chest while Harvey decapitated the third. We looked around at the three limp carcasses.

“Cool,” Harvey blurted, and a smile escaped his lips.

“Over there.” I pointed to a door labeled Engine Room, and danger, and death, but those weren't as important.

The door was bolted shut, but apparently that wasn’t a barrier for a child of Hephaestus. He began to fiddle with the sphere he carried with him until it jumped out of his hand and attached itself to the door. After a few moments of clanking a whirring, the door swung open.

“That,” I emphasized, “Was cool.” “Cabin nine’s counselor, Leo Valdez, made them for the Hephaestus kids,” he dismissed.

He didn’t have time to finish the story as the engine room wasn’t empty. Two kids, they couldn’t be older than Harvey, brandished their blades at our throats.

“Annalise? Brick?” Harvey gasped.

“Hey, Harvey,” the taller boy with messy brown hair greeted.

“What are you guys doing here? I thought you died in Wyoming,” he scrambled to understand.

“Dean saved us. He’s not evil Harvey, he just wants peace,” Annalise pleaded with her sword raised.

“By invading the Underworld?” I scoffed.

“It’s more complicated than that,” she defended. “He needs to stop the Princess before she destroys everything. He’s trying to save people.”

“He has a funny way of showing it,” Harvey seethed. I could see the gears clacking around in his brain, his loyalties being challenged.

“Please, Harvey, if you leave now we won’t have to hurt you,” Annalise begged, lowering her sword for just a second.

“Not a chance.”

He grabbed her loose wrist and wound it around to impale her stomach with her own sword. She gagged, gurgling on her own blood before falling limply to the floor.

Brick lunged at me with a knife, but he was slow, and I was fast. I ducked under the blade, hearing Annabeth’s shouts to go for the legs. I kicked at his knees and he stumbled long enough for me to get behind him. He got his balance and began to turn around, but I threw my arms around his neck and held my knife to his throat.

“Wait!” Harvey shouted before I could break skin. “We don’t want to hurt you Brick.” Brick gagged under the pressure of having someone shorter than him hold him at knifepoint. “If you help us, just tell us where Sam is being kept, we can take you back to camp with us. We can protect you,” Harvey explained.

Brick struggled against my grip, so I pressed a little firmer on the blade in my hand.

“How do I know you’re telling the truth? You just murdered Annalise,” he challenged.

“We were friends once, do you remember that? I don’t want you to die, I don’t want anyone to die, but this is war. Sometimes it can’t be helped, but please don’t make me kill another friend today,” he pleaded.

“Fine, he’s in the starside barracks, just behind the ballroom. Room 11, I think,” he stuttered. “Can you let me go now?”

I could just see Harvey’s face over Brick’s shoulders. I watched it ice over while tears filled his eyes.

“Kill him,” he commanded.

Brick shouted and squirmed.

“No! Harvey! Don’t-” I dragged my dagger across his throat in a clear swift motion.

Brick’s protests were gurgled by the blood pouring onto the blade. He fell to the floor.

Harvey wiped the tears from his face and began his work. He poured the contents of his water bottle on a few select pieces of hardware. He fiddled with the mainframe and the sphere in turn. I kept watch just as the plan had instructed.

We locked the door behind us without a word. The halls were abandoned as we sprinted up the flights of stairs, which could only mean the distraction was paying off, but Harvey’s clock only had four and a half minutes left. We were running out of time. I heard the thump of a body dropping to the floor and distant shouting.

“This way,” I said to Harvey and dragged him down the hall in the direction of the noise.

My heart pounded in my ears, and I ran on the tips of my toes to protect my ankle from further harm.

We rounded a corner, and Harvey crashed into Annabeth running the opposite way.

“What are you guys doing here? You’re supposed to be watching the engine room,” she berated.

“Sam’s in the starside barracks, room 11,” Harvey stuttered out while he got his bearings all over again.

“Let’s go.” Annabeth began running again.

I struggled to keep up as we made for a deck, the waves crashing below. Annabeth cut down demons in our path with a cold stare. I was reminded how glad I was she was on our side.

“This is starside,” she hissed with our backs pressed against a wall to hide from a larger group.

“What are we looking for?”

“He said it was behind the ballroom, that we couldn’t miss it,” Harvey whispered.

“Great. The ballroom’s where I sent Rachel and Haya to attract every demon they could,” she grumbled more to herself than anything. “Stay close, if anything sees you, kill it.”

We crept around the corner, closer and closer to the bustle of a crowd. I didn’t know what their distraction was meant to be, but it sounded like the demons were enjoying it. I’d never been disgusted by so much laughter before.

The hall opened up into what I assumed was the ballroom, but it didn’t have any of the characteristics of a room. There was no ceiling and no walls. Instead, the space was open to the sky and glowing orange from the setting sun. In the center of everyone’s focus, there was a large cage in which both Rachel and Haya were being contained. Demons poked them with sticks and threw rocks through the bars. My stomach lurched for them, and I turned to Annabeth for direction. She shook her head silently, so I stayed as still as I could.

“Ladies, gentlemen, and damned,” the Knight of Hell announced as he strutted across the floor. “I think it’s about time we had some fun with our guests of honor, don’t you?”

The crowd roared.

“What do you say, we could have ‘em eat worms, swim with weights on their ankles, shave their heads. Oh! I know, battle royale,” he leered. Rachel clenched her fists at her sides.

“I won’t fight for your amusement,” she declared.

“Sure you will. Everyone has a price.” He turned to the nearest demon.

“Open the cage.”

The demon rattled a key into the padlock and opened the door wide for Rachel and Haya to leave. When they didn’t budge, Dean had guards drag them out kicking and screaming.

Annabeth tapped my arm, and once she had my attention, she pointed to the roof of the barracks. Harvey showed her his watch which only had two minutes left on the timer. Sure enough, a flustered looking demon appeared in the crowd and began to whisper in Dean’s ear.

Annabeth bent down and laced her fingers together, motioning for me to use the boost. I put my right foot in her hand to protect my swollen ankle, and she thrust me in time with my jump. I caught my hand on the bar above and began to pull. I felt Annabeth pushing me up, and soon, I was tumbling onto the smooth white surface.

I pulled Harvey up shortly after, but Annabeth didn’t follow. She pulled her hair out of her ponytail and messed it around a bit before she strode into the crowd of demons.

“What does she think she’s doing?” I hissed.

“She’s buying us time, let’s move,” Harvey explained.

We began to scooch with our elbows to an airlock a few feet away, keeping our stomachs plastered to the surface. The crowd chanted for the fight to continue, and I hoped this was their distraction and not a horrible mistake. Harvey locked the sphere onto the trapdoor that was our entrance into the barracks. The crowd’s cheers turned into grumbles and shouts as we heard a loud voice holler.

“There are intruders on the ship! Find them, and kill them!” the voice bellowed.

Then the sounds of blades crashing together and bodies falling to the floor arose from below. I willed the sphere to work faster. Harvey held his breath with his cheeks puffed out like a child underwater. The lock hissed open and lifted into the air. I winced at the noise that had cut through the chatter of battle, and we waited for it to die out.

“On the roof!” a demon cried out.

“Go!” I directed, shoving Harvey down the hole.

No longer concerned about noise, we clambered to the carpeted floor in the barracks. The airlock dropped into a hallway with double doors that opened into the ballroom and rooms on either side that were numbered clearly. It didn’t take long for the demons to spot us.

“Holly, here!” Harvey yanked me to a door labeled with two silver ones and began to work his sphere so he could unlock the door.

His hands were shaking, and Dean had taken notice of our position. I examined the wood of the door and the mechanics of the lock. Around Dean’s neck, I could see the stitches that had sewn his head back on. The skin puckered around the wound like the worst Frankenstein monster ever created. Harvey slapped the sphere onto the door, but we’d run out of time.

“Well, well, if it isn’t the kid Sammy dragged along. How the heck are ya?” His mouth twisted around the words like they were poison, and he smiled sweetly.

In the ballroom, the others were occupied completely with the army, but Dean had saved me all for himself. He knew I wouldn’t be getting a rescue. He must’ve also known I wouldn’t put up much of a fight. He was infinitely stronger than me. He could crush me with a single blow; this was common knowledge.

That’s when the idea came to me. An idea that might just keep me alive, mostly born of spite like all of my great ideas, I drew my dagger and hobbled back to the door where Sam was being held.

Harvey followed my lead, which was the worst idea ever, but he pressed his back against the door beside me. The sphere continued clicking away at the lock. It was taking too long.

“Are you just gonna stare at me, tough guy?” I goaded, but my voice still shook with terror.

He lashed out with his fist, and I ducked.

 _“If you can’t hit people, you better learn how to dodge,”_ Annabeth had said only days ago.

His fist landed on the door, splintering through the wood and lodging itself securely through the hole. He pulled it out and the shrapnel clattered around. He growled, and I knew he wouldn’t make the same mistake again. I hoped it was enough.

I spent an exhausting amount of time ducking and rolling away from Dean’s fists, and he was growing angrier, and faster. My brilliant plan wasn’t going to keep me alive for much longer. On the bright side, he had completely forgotten about Harvey. Each time he dared to glance at the son of Hephaestus breaking through the door, I poked him a little harder.

“You know, I heard you named yourself Knight of Hell. I didn’t think that was allowed.”

I fell to the floor. Harvey was so close. He just needed me to buy him a little more time, but Dean had run out of patience.

He lashed out for Harvey’s neck and wrapped around it easily since he hadn’t been paying attention. He lifted him by his throat, pressing him against the wall. With his other hand, he crushed the sphere before it could unlock the door. Through the hole, I could see Sam bound to a chair, slumped over, probably passed out, but the hesitant rise and fall of his chest assured me he was alive.

Harvey gasped for the breaths that Dean squeezed away. His face was an ugly shade of red that was quickly turning purple. I shifted my dagger in my hand and ran to rescue my friend. Once I was at his side, grappling to free him from Dean’s grip, I threw my dagger as far as I could through the hole in the door. I heard it thump to the floor, and Dean struck my face. The ring on his hand hit my cheekbone with a crack.

I fell to my knees, spitting the blood from my mouth.

Harvey’s gasps fell silent, and Dean let him fall uselessly to the floor. His lips had turned blue, and bruises had begun to form where Dean’s grip had been.

He lifted me to my feet by the collar of my shirt and held me against the wall.

“What does it feel like? To be beaten?” he prodded, and I grimaced under his stare.

He punched me again, this time in the stomach, and I couldn’t breathe.

“You should’ve known not to take something that’s mine, sweetheart.”

My vision blackened from his next hit, and I stopped being able to hear his taunting. I felt the carpet underneath my fingers, but I didn’t remember falling. I heard garbled voices and the sounds of fighting, the sounds of war, but they were swimming around me.

“Holly, open your eyes, look at me,” a faraway voice called to me.

Somehow I was aware of a hand on my shoulder. I pried open my eyelids to find a different, brighter, harsher world than the one I had left. Sam was crouched down over me.

“We have to go now.”

Behind him, Dean’s body lay torn from its head, and I could hear his voice shouting from behind the door of a locked cabin. Sam lifted me to my feet and helped me find my balance.

I began to follow him, but as we stepped over Harvey who was collapsed on the floor, I stopped.

“Wait, we can’t leave him,” I choked.

Sam knelt in front of him, checked for breathing, checked for a pulse. I couldn’t tell if the dampness on my face was blood or tears, definitely both.

“You’re right, he’s still alive, but barely. Help me lift him.”

I had a hard time holding myself up, so I don’t know how he expected me to do that, but somehow I managed to get him upright enough for Sam to throw him over his shoulder. We ran into the ballroom where Annabeth was holding her own against a crowd of demons and a pile of corpses.

The moment she saw us, she shouted for us to follow and began running toward the bow of the ship. Rachel and Haya weren’t far behind. The demons that chased us were met with balls of electricity and Annabeth’s merciless sword. Rachel untwisted the top of her peanut butter jar and poured the contents behind her as she ran. Sam fended off the demons that grabbed at my limbs one-handed while I just tried to stay upright, toppling forward in the right direction.

As we ran toward the end of the ship, a clear dead end, it became apparent to me that we were going to jump. Being the resident expert of horrible ideas, I politely objected.

“No fucking way am I jumping off this ship, Annabeth!” I hollered. She met me with an iron-grey stare.

“Then I will throw you,” she declared, and I knew there was no other choice.

I stepped onto the edge, faced the yards between me and the surface, and hurled myself into the water. I heard the shouts of demons as I fell. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a yellow life raft and wondered if I was supposed to be aiming for it.

The water crashed around me, filling my fresh wounds with salt. It rushed through my ears, but that might’ve been my heart pounding. The cold shocked my lungs, and I gasped. I swallowed seawater and choked on it all the way down. I tried to kick to the surface, but my ankle throbbed. I paddled with my hands until they broke the surface into the frigid evening air. With my head above water, I coughed out the water in my lungs. Unable to keep myself afloat, I began to sink, and so began the horrific cycle of drowning, gasping for air at the surface, falling back into the cold depths.

It went on until a pair of warm arms wrapped underneath my shoulders. I grappled to hold onto them in a desperate panic, but they stayed wrapped around me. My head stayed above water, and I could choke out the water from my lungs and breathe deeply.

I was shaking from the cold, the fear, the pain, so I struggled to hold onto Sam’s hand as he pulled me onto the life raft.

Annabeth climbed in after me, and I thanked her for rescuing me. She didn’t respond but grabbed a paddle and began to shove it through the water.

“Does anyone know where the sphere is?” Rachel asked as she worked with her own paddle.

“Dean-” I coughed. “He, uh - he smashed it.” My teeth chattered violently.

“I guess we’ll just have to get creative then,” said Haya.

She threw a spark at the bow of the ship where Rachel had poured out the contents of her peanut butter jar. It began to burst into flames, tracing a line down tt

he stairs, and all the way through the barracks. Small explosions were set off one after another, until the big one came, thrusting us forward on a giant wave. Once the dust settled, other lifeboats were exposed, filled with demons out for blood.

“I would commit actual murder for ten seconds of peace,” Annabeth grumbled and began to paddle faster.

The rest of the party followed suit. Everyone except for me and Harvey, who was still unconscious. I rifled through Annabeth’s backpack for the magical food and forced some down Harvey’s mouth. His breath came out rackety and far apart, but once the ambrosia made its way down his throat, he gasped and coughed.

“Fuck,” he rasped. “How am I not dead?”

“I can be really distracting,” I joked.

He laughed airily as we paddled to shore. We were nowhere near the yachting club, but we didn’t have time, being chased by bloodthirsty demons from Hell and all. We filed out onto the beach and began racing down the sand.

“Harvey, so glad you could join us,” Annabeth panted, not slowing for a second. “Where’s the nearest entrance to the Labyrinth?”

“What?” he gargled.

“We need to disappear,” she elaborated.

He began to visibly wrack his brain for any idea but came up blank.

“I don’t know, I lost my sphere,” he breathed.

The demons docked at the shore and began to thunder after us.

“Alright, improv it is then. Everyone, follow my lead,” Annabeth declared as if any of us would dare do anything else.

We broke through the treeline and followed Annabeth as she wound through the trees in a random and confusing pattern. It was like the most intense game of follow-the-leader that I had ever been a part of. Finally, we reached the edge of a cliff, and Annabeth began searching for something amongst the rocks. We never stopped running. I was going to throw up if we didn’t stop running.

Just in time, Annabeth found what she was looking for: a glowing blue triangle next to a cut in the cliff. She heaved aside a boulder that was leaning precariously to reveal a dark opening.

“They’re over here!” a gruff voice called out.

Sam thrust my dagger into the demon’s gut, and its skeleton flashed orange. The rest took notice of where we were and sauntered forward. They thought we were cornered.

“Get in!” Annabeth cried, and we shuffled into the small space.

She yanked the rock down over the entrance before any of the demons could follow us. The boulder crashed to the ground and sent a flurry of rubble cascading to block the entrance.

“No going back now,” Rachel muttered.


	5. I Make a Handy Friend

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I'm super proud of this chapter title  
> you'll see why  
> more labyrinth fun  
> I will most likely come back and fix it up later because I feel like a lot of these scenes could use work

Being trapped in the Labyrinth was not ideal, but it wasn’t until we connected the dots with Harvey’s destroyed sphere that we realized we were truly screwed.

Annabeth suggested we keep moving, but that was met with great disapproval. We stayed in the cramped corridor and nursed our wounds under the light of a single dying flashlight. We ate the snacks from the gas station and split the last of the water. I slept the first shift while Annabeth, Rachel, and Sam kept lookout.

As I drifted off to sleep, Percy Jackson appeared as he always did.

When usually he was joking, flirting almost, with whoever was around, this time, he was screaming. He was facing the wall now so his back was exposed. On a small spot near his lower back, a circle of blood had formed.

“It’s funny how we spent all that time trying to hurt you, and now all I have to do is this.”

He pressed his finger on the small cut. Percy writhed in pain, his muscles clenching under the stress. The cavern shook, and beyond its walls, a crack of thunder boomed and roared. The wind knocked against the outside, and I heard a tree fall with a crack and a bang.

He yelled until the torturer released him, and he collapsed, gasping for breath, his head falling forward.

“Now you’re going to tell me everything you know,” the man said.

“Hurry up, then,” he grumbled.

The torturer thought the comment was meant for him, but after so long spending my nights with him, I heard the real message.

_Hurry._

The darkness encompassed my vision, and the dream changed.

I was in a bright room with a large window overlooking the water. There was a couch opposite a flatscreen TV and a fully stocked bar to the side. Sitting in the large leather chair, was none other than Dean, the Knight of Hell.

His skin was bubbling and settling back into place, the scar on his neck held together with fresh stitches. He stared ahead with his jaw clenched and his eyes a bright green against the contrast of blood.

“Sir?” a timid man proposed.

Dean didn’t respond. “

We’ve checked the wreckage. There’s no sign of Sam anywhere.”

“You lost him?” Dean clarified.

“He escaped, sir,” the young man corrected.

Dean rose onto feet that shifted back into place as he walked.

“No, you lost him.”

I heard the demon gulp when Dean’s eyes flashed black.

“Do you know what my job was? The first time I went to Hell?” Dean lulled while he made his way to the bar.

“No, sir.”

“I was a torturer. They tasked me with the souls that nobody else could break.” He set two glasses down on the wood with a clink. “Have a drink with me.”

“That’s okay, I just came to deliver the news-”

“Have a drink with me,” Dean said again.

The demon obeyed. With a trembling hand, he lifted his glass and sipped at the caramel-colored liquid. The whiskey shuddered in his glass while Dean’s went smoothly down his throat in a single gulp. He began to pour another glass.

“Do you know what I like about you?” Dean asked.

He swirled the drink as he poised it between two fingers.

“What’s that, sir?”

“You came to me broken.” He threw back the second glass and grimaced at the taste. “That makes you expendable. I need more expendable soldiers now and then.”

“Sir, we can search the bottom again, or the forest,” he pleaded. Dean shrugged.

“Hm, maybe. But not you.”

He snapped his fingers, and the demon splattered into a trillion droplets of blood. Dean wiped a chunk off of his sheet and walked back to his seat. His skin had almost entirely resettled, but the line around his neck hadn’t changed a bit.

“Linda?” he called.

The clicking of stilettos against a hard floor clambered into the room. The woman wearing them wore a bright red pant suit with matching glasses.

“It’s, um, actually, Francine, sir,” she jumbled.

“My last girl was Linda.” He reclined into the padding of the seat.

“Linda’s fine,” she rushed. He smiled.

“Good. Let the demons know we’re invading the Underworld,” he said while he propped his feet up on the coffee table.

He cracked his neck, and the bones shifted and popped into place.

“When?” she asked.

“After I have a burger,” he responded.

Francine stood there without anything to say for a moment. She looked at the man in the seat in front of her like she couldn’t believe he was the fool in charge.

“Well?” Dean spoke up.

“Oh,” she said. “The burger or the war?”

“Burger first, and make sure it has loads of bacon.”

“Yes, sir.” She clicked back out of the room.

A hand shook me awake before another dream could take over, and I opened my eyes to more darkness.

“We have to start moving,” Annabeth urged and hoisted me to my feet.

I was standing before I was awake enough to know what to do with my feet.

“What about my turn as lookout?” I asked, wincing at the throbbing that came from my jaw when I moved it.

“Harvey took over. You needed the rest.”

I resisted the urge to argue. First, because she was right, but also because she would decimate me in an argument even if she was wrong.

Rachel led the way. Annabeth assured me that her ability to see through the Mist had gotten her safely through the maze before, but the way her eyebrows pinched together made me wonder if even she believed it. Harvey dragged his feet and moped. He was the only one behind me since everyone else was faster than the girl with the limp.

I did feel a lot better after a little bit of sleep. My vision wasn’t swimming and many of the pains had reduced to dull aches after being given some time to heal. My ankle was the only thing that had gotten worse. I had to do way more running than it liked recently.

We walked for a long time without any near-death experiences, which at this point in the journey, only made me uneasy.

Haya called to stop for a break a couple of times, but Annabeth turned her down. According to her, we’d already wasted enough time in the maze, and there was no way to tell how much time was passing on the surface.

We continued to trudge along, and the maze continued to fuck with us. One minute we were turning down a corridor, the next it had completely disappeared. Bottomless pits appeared underfoot where they hadn’t been moments before. It became almost dull.

We started to expect that the space around us was going to change when we least expected it, and we learned to respond instantly. Giant spikes shoot up from the ground? Jump to the side. Sea of poisonous snakes? Get out your dagger and start hacking. The snakes were actually a bit more difficult than I’m giving them credit for, but once Rachel showed us a tunnel out of the pit, we were free and clear.

“Have you found an exit yet?” Harvey complained.

Rachel groaned, “No, I haven’t. Would you please stop asking me that.”

“My feet hurt. I’m bored. I’m thirsty, and my throat is sore,” he continued.

“Better bored than dead,” Sam replied, just in time for the floor to drop.

It didn’t drop fast enough for us to float through the air, but we were all knocked to the ground. Beneath the corridor we had been walking down was an arena surrounded by bleachers. The floor we’d been standing on sank through the sand and disappeared completely, leaving us standing in the large and open space. Torches lit around the edges of the arena, proving that the bleachers were empty.

Nevertheless, an announcer’s voice boomed through the air.

“Now, presenting.” He drew out the vowels for dramatic effect. “For your enjoyment, the fabulous, the most formidable, Sam Winchester!”

Resounding boos came from a crowd that wasn’t there. We looked at Sam who seemed just as startled as we were.

“And his opponent, our beloved champion, Briares, the Hundred Handed One!”

Annabeth sighed in relief.

“It’s fine, we’re friends,” she explained.

Before anyone could question her about how she became friends with a so-called Hundred Handed One, a large gate scraped open revealing a giant being with one hundred arms and one hundred hands. The sight was nearly laughable, trying to fit that many limbs onto one body, even a large one. Briares pounded on his chest with one hundred fists, and the nonexistent crowd cheered and hollered his name.

The giant then charged at us like a battering ram, forcing us to roll out of the way.

“I thought you said you were friends!” Sam yelled while Briares wheeled around for a second run.

“We are!” She turned to the giant. “Briares! It’s me! Annabeth! Remember me?” she called with her arms wide.

“I know who you are,” Briares responded in a voice that was much kinder than I had anticipated.

“Yeah, we’re friends, aren’t we?” she pressed on.

“We were friends...before…”

“Before what, Briares?”

His face changed shape, so it had jowls that punctuated his frown.

“Before the Princess claimed my soul. Now, I have a job, and my story will be remembered!” he shouted.

One hundred fists pounded the ground in front of him, sending a shock wave that hurtled us all backward.

“Ooooh!” the announcer groaned. “That’s gotta hurt!”

Everyone soon adopted my strategy of dodging until someone came up with a better idea, surviving for as long as possible. Nobody bothered drawing their weapons. We only rolled away and ran in different directions like chickens with their heads chopped off. Briares played whack-a-mole with one hundred different mallets, but he only had one pair of eyes.

“Team Winchester is playing it safe. Look at that dodge from Miss Dare! You can’t buy that online!”

We kept to his blind spots, bobbing, and weaving to avoid his fists.

Something had to change before one of us messed up. Annabeth was way ahead of me.

“Briares, behind you!” she shouted. He whipped around to face her, but she slid under his legs. She stayed crouched like that, in the terribly awkward position of ducking so her head didn’t bump something it shouldn’t. The announcer chimed in.

“Sam Winchester’s teammate goes for the duck and cover approach. Briares is ready to engage…”

Briares tried to stomp on her, but she shifted to follow his hips wherever they moved. When she saw an opportunity, she slashed the back of the giant’s knees, and he keeled over, his hundred hands catching his fall with a thundering calunk.

“And the champion is down! Let’s give him some encouragement folks!”

The crowd began to chant his name while Annabeth lumbered onto his back. With tears in her eyes, she drove her sword into his back.

“Chase goes in for the kill…”

Briares roared in pain, but he didn’t turn to dust. In fact, he stood to his feet and shook his shoulders. In his eyes, I didn’t see rage as I’d seen in the wind spirits or hunger like the cyclops. What I saw was very clearly fear.

“And he’s back on his feet! If I hadn’t just seen it, I wouldn’t believe it for a damn! Faced with the trembling jaws of defeat, this giant will not back down!” the announcer bellowed. He was really starting to get on my nerves.

Annabeth fell to the ground, her sword still stuck in Briares’s back. She grimaced when she tried to pull herself to her feet, but she was out of time. The giant lifted her in one of his hands and held her out in front of his gaze. He began to squeeze, and my heart pounded in my fingertips. I ran forward until I was in his line of sight.

“Stop!”

“What’s this?” the announcer interrupted. “The mortal has challenged the champion. Get ready for a bloodbath, cover your children’s eyes, this is for mature audiences only!”

“Briares, is it?” I asked, trying to ignore the announcer's taunts.

The giant stared at me with large brown eyes. His face changed shape underneath, but those eyes stayed the same. I wasn’t sure where I was going with this, but I knew I had to keep him distracted from crushing Annabeth. I had to buy her time.

“Where are you from, Briares?”

The giant looked puzzled at the question, and I realized it was most likely a complicated answer from a being that might have lived for millennia.

“I’m from Manhattan,” I continued. “Have you ever been to Manhattan?”

He nodded, and I saw the traces of a smile. I relaxed. The announcer stayed quiet, which I took as a victory in and of itself.

“You can tell people you’re from Manhattan too. I don’t mind. In fact, I’ll back you up, say you lived across the street with me, and we got our mail mixed up all of the time,” I rambled.

“Why aren’t you afraid of me?” Briares finally spoke up.

“Oh, wow, getting at the nitty-gritty there, huh?” I chuckled. “Um, well, I guess I am a little afraid of you because you’re obviously strong, but I don’t think everything that’s strong has to be dangerous. And, well, you said you were friends with Annabeth, and she’s pretty picky.”

He began to loosen his grip on her, and I felt everyone staring at me.

Then, like a light switch flipping off, he became terrifying once again. He tightened his fist around Annabeth and lifted his foot to squash me with a deafening roar. I knelt and crossed my arms over my head.

“Briares!” I called his name.

His foot stopped inches over my head. I crept out of underneath the shadow of his eight toes and looked up at his face once again. His features were stuck between two faces, contorting and bending in pain. He shook Annabeth under the struggle of trying to focus and pressed his eyes shut.

“Briares, look at me,” I urged.

He pulled open his eyes.

“You don’t know me! The Princess has claimed my soul! I have a job to do!”

Annabeth screamed under a particularly tight squeeze.

“It’s your soul, Briares!” I made sure to keep saying his name. “Don’t let her take it from you.”

His big brown eyes locked onto me while the rest of his face morphed wildly. Annabeth gasped for breath as the giant's exertion made him squeeze her in his fist. The rest of his hands trembled and struggled. 

The wait was agonizing.

Finally, he nodded. His face decided on soft features with a bulbous nose. He let Annabeth to the ground and knelt to my eye level. I still saw traces of fear in his features, but it was blotted out by hope and a beaming smile. 

“Will you take me home?” he pleaded, and I wondered how I could ever be scared of such kind eyes.

“Manhattan?” I asked.

He nodded.

“As long as you carry me. My ankle is killing me.”

The air around the bleachers started to shutter and peel, revealing a sea of monsters who all began shouting at once, racing down the steps.

The Hundred Handed One bellowed and tore its arms through the stampede of enemies that threatened us. Harvey slashed through a few strays with his sword, and soon, the others followed. Annabeth used the dagger she kept stashed in her backpack since her sword was still comically poking out of Briares’s back. The group got a fresh burst of energy with a new ally and a foe we knew how to handle.

We kept each other safe until the last monster turned to dust at our feet, and we let ourselves breathe.

“Hey, Briares?” Annabeth panted. “Do you still know your way around down here?”

“More or less, things have changed a lot since the last time,” he confessed.

“Can you get us out?”

“I can. Follow me?” he asked.

We walked behind him through the gate that he had emerged from, down a corridor, and into the winding maze once more. The Labyrinth seemed to respect the Hundred Handed One as it didn’t try so many tricks while we made our way through. We made it all the way to a beam of light without being maimed.

Briares pushed the crack open with about half of his hands and exposed a bright green hill that fell into a park with benches, grill tops, and other normal things. The sun was high in the sky, but after so long in the maze, there really was no way to tell what day that meant. Keeping true to his deal, Briares lifted me onto his shoulder once there was room enough for me not to hit my head.

He walked us to Manhattan from there, soon lifting the rest of them into his many hands after they grew weary. It was almost sunset when we arrived. He set us down near a bus stop and flopped to the ground next to us.

“What now?” he pondered.

He might’ve put his chin in his hand, but the gesture required more effort for him than it was worth.

“Well,” Rachel sighed. “We go back to Montauk beach and keep fighting this war.”

“I don’t want to fight any more wars,” Briares cut in quickly.

“You don’t have to. You can stay here, build a house, get a dog, the world is your oyster, pal,” I explained, wishing I could do the same.

His face changed shape a few times before he settled on one that looked more sincere.

“Thank you,” he said.

“No problem.” I smiled and did my best to hug him, but it was closer to a pile of spaghetti than a warm embrace. It brought Briares some comfort though, so I couldn’t complain too much.

Briares waved goodbye with fifty of his one hundred hands, and we waved back with six of ours. We took the bus back to the beach, it dropped us off at the end of the main road, leaving us to walk a mile and a half down the dirt road until we reached the rickety house.

“Hey, Holly?” Rachel began once Annabeth pulled open the door at long last.

“Yeah?”

“Just wondering.” She paused. “Where in the damn hell did that come from back there?”

“We needed a distraction, so I just started talking.”

“You saved us, you ass.” She gave me a disgusted look while she kicked off her flip flops which she must’ve gotten a long time ago, but I was just now noticing them.

“How does that make me an ass?” I collapsed into the nearest chair.

“You were supposed to be a boring mortal with me, but now you’re a hero just like the rest of them. Thanks a lot,” she grumbled.

I didn’t have the energy to argue, as all the fatigue from the past few days caught up to me and the extra pains settled in. My muscles twitched for rest, and I drifted off without a second thought.


	6. I Take Painkillers Under Adult Supervision

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> pretty lowkey  
> back at the beach house, healing and stuff with magical powers  
> they heal some emotional wounds... gross, that was cheesy, I'm so sorry about that

A lot had changed when I woke up. For one thing, I wasn’t in the chair I had passed out in, but on the bottom bunk of a bed in the attic. It was still dark outside, but the sky was getting lighter by the second. My ankle had an air cast around it, and I could feel gauze over my other injuries. My bones ached to stay in bed, but my stomach growled louder, so I hauled myself to my feet and hobbled down the stairs.

I found it a whole lot easier to walk with my ankle completely immobilized.

“Good morning,” greeted a bright new face. His hair looked sun-bleached, and his face was covered in dark freckles.

“Morning,” I replied.

“I’m Will, son of Apollo, do you mind taking a seat?” He pulled a bar stool out from the kitchen island.

“Sure.” I propped myself up on it, and he began to examine the bruises on my face.

“Look at me,” he said and flashed a light in my eyes.

“How’s your pain?”

“Uh.” I did a quick tally of the throbbing. “Not pleasant.”

“Alright, how about trying to describe it?” he laughed.

“It just aches, everywhere,” I grumbled.

“Headaches?”

I nodded.

“Okay.” He rifled through a bag on the counter.

“You have a concussion, so you get to wear these cool sunglasses and not do anything. I can give you Tylenol for the pain, but don’t take anything else without talking to me, or your brain might bleed, and you’d die a painful death.”

“Got it,” I commented.

“Your ankle has a small fracture, but I worked some of my magic, and it should be better in a couple of days if you keep it elevated and iced.”

He gave me a glass of water and a couple of pills, which I took and downed the rest of the glass once I realized how thirsty I was.

“So,” I began. “You’re like a doctor or something?”

“Not legally, but I’m the closest they’ve got.” He passed me a plate of eggs and hashbrowns. “You should eat something. I’m gonna go check on the others.”

“Thanks,” I mumbled while he lifted his bag of supplies onto his shoulder.

He grinned and turned to walk up the stairs.

There was something particularly delicious about a home cooked meal after a near death experience. I finished my plate only to shovel more eggs on and coat them in syrup. The sunglasses he had given me had flowers on the corners of the lenses and they definitely used to be pink, but the paint had worn off enough to where it looked like a trendy camo print. I reluctantly put them on as the morning sun glared in through the windows above the kitchen sink.

“I wanted to thank you,” Sam told me. “For coming to rescue me.”

He sat down across from me and folded his hands on the table.

“It was Annabeth,” I dismissed, which caused him to frown.

“I already thanked her.”

I scraped at a puddle of syrup still left on my plate. Behind me, Luke and Annabeth were having a hushed conversation. Every once in a while, one of them would raise their voices enough for me to catch a few words, but they never meant much out of context.

“I also wanted to say I’m sorry,” Sam confessed.

I looked up at him and raised my eyebrows.

“I know I’ve been hard on you,” he explained. “And the truth is, Annabeth was right.”

I laughed, “She does that a lot.”

That earned a small smirk from him.

“Yeah, she does. She said that I was behaving like my father, and I guess I was.” He held my gaze to emote his sincerity. “I don’t want to be my father.”

He exposed the most emotion that he had ever let me see in all the time I had spent with him.

“It’s forgotten,” I assured him, and his mouth twitched in satisfaction.

“Then, in the spirit of letting you in on things, you should know we were in the Labyrinth for a week,” he began.

“A week?” I interrupted out of shock.

“Yeah, he’s mobilized his forces for the Underworld. There have been signs that the Princess knows he’s coming, that she’s preparing for battle: earthquakes, eruptions, hurricanes, people dropping dead in broad daylight.”

“She’s taking them, their souls, before their time is up.”

“She’s building her army,” he went on. “Annabeth thinks that if she can find Jackson, we’ll have a leg up, but so far there hasn’t been any progress on where he’s at.” Hurry, Percy had urged. Was that a whole week ago?

“You said there were hurricanes?” I asked. Sam knitted his brows together.

“Yeah, just the one actually. And, get this, it started in mainland Europe. It’s got all the news sources baffled.”

I remembered the cracking of the trees and the roaring of the wind, the thunder, Percy’s screams. _Hurry_. I lumbered to my feet.

“Annabeth,” I called. She paused her conversation for a breath to look at me.

“What?” she spat, still harboring some of her frustration for Luke.

“The hurricane, I think it’s Percy.”

I grabbed onto the bag of a recliner for support and did my best not to put any weight on my left foot.

“Are you sure?” she said, barely above a whisper.

“Yeah, I had a dream, they found his weak spot or something, he was yelling, and I could hear it on the other side of the walls.”

She rushed to open a map before I could finish and traced a line with her finger.

“He’s in Poland,” she declared.

“Poland? That’s where I sent the tails,” Luke jumped in. “They lost contact in Krakow.”

“Because you went behind my back instead of sticking to the plan,” Annabeth bit.

“You’re right, next time I’ll send you a postcard. Dear Annabeth, I’m still in charge and giving orders without consulting you. Where should I send it? Labyrinth? Exploding yacht?”

“They died, Luke,” she argued.

“You don’t know that.”

“Yes, I do.” She looked back at the map. “That’s Krakow. It’s a city, doesn’t give us much really, but the hurricane started in the mountains from what we can tell. Since it dropped down to Italy, it most likely came from this ridge.”

She traced a line in the topography that curved and dropped down into southern Europe. She began to search through more maps and flutter the pages of tour guides. Before long, she was lost in the research.

I took her silence as a cue to go back up to my bed and get a fresh pair of clothes. I was still in the wrecked orange T-shirt and jeans that I’d left the house in, and other than the rinse I’d given them in the gas station bathroom, they harbored every stench that I’d given them since then. I showered as well, which was a religious experience. I washed everything out until the water ran clear, and stood there for another ten minutes afterwards.

The aircast was easy to remove and even easier to put back on once I dried off, but I decided not to tell Will that I’d tried. Something told me he wouldn’t let me out of my sight if he knew I was messing with things I shouldn’t be. I brushed my hair while sitting on the toilet, so I wouldn’t have to stand anymore. I took a break halfway through when my head started to hurt. The door creaked open.

“Hey,” Haya greeted as she grabbed one of the toothbrushes sitting in the cup.

“Hey,” I responded.

“How are you?”

“Alive.”

I nodded.

“Same.”

I finished combing my hair while she brushed her teet, and I taped a new bandage over the cut on my cheek. The bruises covering my face still had the distinct shape of Dean’s ring.

“I think I’m gonna shave my head,” said Haya while she examined herself in the mirror.

“You’re gonna what?” I asked.

She sighed and tugged at the curls on her head.

“It’s just, I never learned how to braid it, there’s no way I’m getting Drew to do it for me, and I can’t have it flopping in my face, so it’s gotta go.”

After I gave her words a second thought, it made sense. She’d just lost her sister. I decided not to argue.

“Alright,” I agreed. “I’ll help you if you cut mine.” She smiled, her eyes full of mirth.

“Deal,” she said before running to drag a stool in from the kitchen.

She set it up in front of the sink and fished around in the drawers for a pair of scissors. She found them buried under a pack of batteries and a wide-toothed comb. I was beginning to understand that there was no order to the chaos in this house.

“Well come on then,” Haya beckoned, patting the tattered cushion. I wrapped the towel I’d used for my shower around my shoulders and settled onto the stool. Haya ran her fingers through my hair as if she was testing the waters. The red waves fell all the way down my back, but more than half of it was dead with split ends.

“How short do you want it?” she asked.

“To my shoulders,” I decided.

She looked ready to object but stopped herself when she remembered our deal. She wrapped sections in neat ponytails like she actually knew what she was doing.

“Ready?”

“Yup.” I heard the scraping of the scissors as they sheared through the lock of hair.

“Okay, that physically hurt,” Haya breathed. I laughed.

“It was liberating,” I corrected her, smiling into the mirror despite the pinch it gave my swollen cheeks.

My laughter broke a wall that Haya had been holding up since I first met her.

“But your hair is so pretty.” She continued to cut the rest of the ponytails free. “It’s like a princess, and with your eyes, god I’m obsessed with your eyes.”

“No homo though,” I muttered because I was never good at taking a compliment.

“Shut up, they’re like the frickin’ northern lights. I can be jealous and still like dick.”

I laughed all the way from my stomach and through my shoulders. Haya chuckled with me, trimming the edges until they were even all the way around. When she was satisfied, she shook it out from my scalp and looked at me in the mirror.

“There you go.” She grinned. “My turn now.”

I stood from my stool and limped behind it while Haya found an electric hair clipper in one of the cupboards. She closed her eyes and stayed completely silent while I worked the clipper through her hair. It fell away in chunks, revealing her scalp bit by bit. I was careful not to cut her since she was putting her trust in me, and I kept it even throughout. It didn’t take nearly as long as I was prepared for.

“You’re all done, Haya.” She opened her eyes and tilted her head in the mirror.

I waited for her reaction as she ran her hands over the fuzz that was left behind. Her face broke out into a smile, and she threw her arms around me.

“Oh!” I yelped in surprise, stumbling a little. She pulled back.

“Shit, sorry. Thanks for the haircut,” she rambled.

A single tear sprouted from her eye, but she cast it away before it could fall down her face. I followed her into the attic where we shared a bunk in silence. She read a book while I rested my eyes. It was a wonderful arrangement, even lasting through lunch which we forced Rachel to bring up to us.She leaned her back up against the bed and began to sketch something with color pastels.

Harvey laid on a bed on the other side of the attic, closer to the window. Will told me he was fine, just resting, but I wondered how long he would need to rest for. I couldn’t get the image of him choking to death. Death, he’d died. I’d watched the life seep out of him, but he was breathing now. I watched the heavy rise and fall of his chest.

Rachel was telling us a story about the boarding school she went to for a couple of years back in high school when Will came into the attic. He’d been doing that a lot lately. Whether it was to check on Harvey or sing to my ankle. I thought that was strange at first, but I could feel them working, so I moved on from the absurdity of it.

“We’re burning the shrouds, so you guys should come on down,” he told us, and Rachel finished her story in a haphazard sort of way.

I trailed behind the others on my way down the stairs, and when I finally made it to the bottom, Will had a pair of crutches waiting for me.

“Don’t lose them, we only have a couple more pairs back at camp,” he warned.

“How do you lose a pair of crutches?” I wondered.

“You’d be surprised.” He smiled and looked past me as if the memory had been soured over time.

Behind the house, there was a large yard that melted into the beach. A large swath of the green was bathed in a shadow from the house where the sun had dipped behind. Those present were sitting on benches or standing closer to a tall fire for warmth. I saw a few unfamiliar faces amongst the crowd, but I also saw Jody and Claire whom I remembered from a case Sam and I had worked in South Dakota. Laid out on an old picnic table were several pieces of intricately decorated fabrics. The top one glittered in the firelight.

“So, what exactly is it that we’re doing?” I asked Will as we walked over to the fire ring.

“It’s an old tradition from before. When a demigod doesn’t come back alive, most of the time we don’t have a body, so we burn their shroud instead of wrapping them in it.” He noticed someone standing close to the flame. “I should go.”

“Yeah, go,” I dismissed him when he hesitated to leave me.

He jogged to his friend’s side, and I made my way to the bench where Claire was sitting, leaning over with her elbows on her legs.

“Hey,” I greeted her.

She didn’t smile, but she looked at me for a moment, so I took that as a sign that she was glad to see me.

“Well, you look like shit,” she said.

“Thanks.”

She lifted her finger to point at the marks decorating my face.

“Dean do that to you?” she questioned.

“Yeah.”

She frowned.

“But, you know, I was asking for it. Quite literally I’m afraid.” I adjusted the positioning of the crutches next to me.

“I heard you saved Sam’s ass.” She kept her gaze trained on the flames ahead, the orange making her blonde waves glow spectacularly.

“Annabeth saved his ass.” I nodded to where she was leaning up against the picnic table with her arms crossed and her eyes deep in thought.

“I heard that too. I’ve never formally met her, so correct me if I’m wrong, but she doesn’t seem like the kind of person to give undue credit,” she commented.

“Annabeth was the one who told you?”

“Yeah, she seemed pretty pissed off about it.” I snorted.

I could’ve let the silence linger, but I was scared of letting my thoughts wander to purple lips and dead stares.

“What brings you here, then?” I started. Claire looked up at me for a second and leaned back onto the table behind us.

“Sam called Jody last night to tell her he was alive. I guess they got to talking about Wyoming. Next thing I knew, we were on the road.” She picked at her nails.

“Did something happen with the troops Luke sent?” I wondered, and she locked her eyes onto mine with a kind of intensity that I’d come to expect from the people around me.

“They never showed up.” She shrugged. “But that didn’t stop the other side from hearing about it, so they went after the couple of bases we were holding. I wanted to go help, but Jody thought we could do more behind the scenes, coordinating extraction teams.”

“You think that sounds like giving up,” I finished for her.

“Isn’t it?” she scoffed, throwing her hair back over her shoulder with a toss of her head.

“I guess.” She rolled her eyes at my answer but didn’t say anything.

Soon, Annabeth lifted herself from her position at the picnic table and strode into the light of the fire. Without her having to call for it, she had everyone’s attention.

“Thank you all for coming. I know some of you took risks to be here, and I know that there are many who couldn’t make it, but I’m grateful to see so many of you who could be.” She paused and took a deep breath. “None of us are strangers to war, what it means, the lives it costs, but that doesn’t really make it easier, does it?”

That earned her a morbid chuckle.

“But the war keeps going on around us. We are called to fight alongside those who we would give our lives for, and we are tested to see how true that is. When those we love fall, we don’t have time to cry. We must keep fighting, pretending we don’t see their faces staring back up at us, or hear their voices calling out.”

Her voice broke a little at the end, and her eyes welled with tears of her own. She swallowed. Someone sniffled to my right.

“Tonight, I invite you all to pause. I will recite the names of the shrouds we are to burn, and we will cry for them, we will remember them, and tomorrow we will survive in their name.”

She lifted the first glittering fabric from the pile.

“First, Reece Bloomer, daughter of Aphrodite.”

I heard a loud sob crack out of someone’s chest. The flame engulfed the navy blue dove painted in the center of the shroud.

“She will be remembered.” Annabeth waited for the last scraps of the shroud to burn to ash before lifting the next one off of the pile.

“Adriano Lopez, son of Apollo. He will be remembered.”

The fire burned the shroud covered in music notes and paint splatters. She went on like that, reciting their name, their parentage, declaring that they would be remembered, and waiting for each one to completely disappear before moving on to the next. The cries of those who knew the fallen grew louder. I felt tears of sympathy build under my eyelids.

“Paloma Guisse, daughter of Demeter,” she recited.

This time the crowd mumbled with her.

“She will be remembered.”

“William Strout, son of Ares.”

“He will be remembered,” the crowd finished.

At some point during the list, we grew closer, physically closer. People held each other when previously they had been standing a foot apart. A boy leaned against his neighbor's shoulder where they sat on the bench. I remembered how much space had been between them at the beginning.

“Tyler Heddengate, son of Demeter.”

“He will be remembered.”

The ashes at the bottom of the fire began to pile up and spark out of the flames. Nobody paid it any mind.

“Amaryllis Grout, daughter of Hecate.”

And my tears fell without warning because she was braiding my hair again, waving hello as I walked into a world I didn’t know. She was wearing red nail polish and calling out for help as the tornado whipped her braids through the air.

“She will be remembered,” I stuttered with the rest of them.

Claire wrapped her arm around my shoulder and pulled me close to her side. Her grip was firm and reassuring while I let myself remember. Out of respect, I forced myself to pay attention to the rest of the names. The people who had families, friends, people they had known for a few days. I realized I was the ripple effect.

The last shroud disappeared into ash, and Annabeth sat down at the picnic table, letting the silence be filled with grief instead of needless words. We stayed out there until the fire began to die and the stars came out. The breeze from the ocean was what caused the first person to retreat indoors, and the rest were quick to follow.

Dinner was pizza for a thousand, but the twenty-some people that were present managed to eat it all just fine before they piled into the attic to fight over the last bunk beds, so they wouldn’t be stuck on the floor in a sleeping bag.

I was just about to fall asleep with a full stomach and a calmer mind when Rachel appeared at my bedside.

“Rachel?” I questioned her.

“Sorry,” she whispered. “Super weird question: can I sleep with you?”

I gave her a look.

“No, like, in your bed. I gave mine to some hunter guy who wouldn’t stop bitching about his back problems, but I really don’t want to sleep on the floor, and the truth is, sleeping alone kind of sucks as well,” she clarified.

I scooched over until I was against the wall, and she wiggled in next to me. If either one of us was any taller, then we would have had an issue, but as it was, we fit comfortably.

“Good night, Holly.”

“Night, Red.”


	7. I Attend an SACA Meeting (Scared of Annabeth Chase Anonymous)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> they get ready to go after percy  
> more obscure spn hunters in this chapter, so in case yall were wondering  
> asa fox: the dude that was killed and sam, dean, and mary went to the funeral that got hijacked by a demon  
> martin creaser: the dude in the mental hospital way back in season five or something  
> tamara: she helped them fight the seven deadly sins and her husband died when gluttony made him drink a bunch of bleach  
> gordon walker: I feel like everyone remembers him, he's the dude that went crazy trying to kill sam, then turned into a vampire

For nearly four days, Annabeth had been unreachable. She hogged the entire living room in her search for knowledge. Nobody could crack her.

It was because of this, that everyone cheered when she looked up from her table with the eyes of an epiphany. 

“I’ve got it!” she declared. 

“Finally,” Harvey grumbled. He had been making vast improvements since the fire. Just recently, his sarcastic bite had sprung back in full force. 

“Shut up, Harvey,” Annabeth cheered. “Or next time there’s a puzzle I’ll make you solve it.” The threat didn’t stick. 

She flipped back a page on the book she was holding and walked it over to the kitchen island where Harvey, Claire, and I had been taking advantage of the snacks laid out. 

“Here.” She pointed at the page, and Harvey took a single glance at it before rolling his eyes. 

“That’s not English, Annabeth.”

“Exactly, it’s Polish,” she explained. 

“Oh, great. Did you hear that Holly? It’s Polish! Hey, Annabeth, I still can’t read it,” he teased. 

Annabeth stuck him with a withering glare. 

“I know it’s hard being an idiot  _ and  _ expecting to hide it all the time, but if you could please try a little harder I would be thankful.”

Harvey narrowed his eyes at her but kept his mouth shut. 

“I translated obviously,” she continued. “But it’s a miracle I found the copy in polish in the libraries. Everything’s more reliable in the original language. This section is about the Tatra mountains. Apparently, there’s a mountain called Giewont that people call the Sleeping Knights because from the valley the mountain looks like someone sleeping.”

She flipped the page over again. 

“There’s a picture here,” she said, showing the sketch of a mountain ridge that emulated the outline of a person laying on their back with their hand folded peacefully over their stomach.

“Cool, you found a mountain with a backstory,” Harvey poked. 

“I know, too bad I couldn’t find your mom that condom soon enough,” she said the same way someone would say  _ too bad I didn’t get a second gallon of milk.  _

Claire ooed at the remark while Harvey clicked his mouth shut. 

“Don’t test your jokes on me, hon. I will win, and you  _ will  _ lose,” she stated. Harvey didn’t respond, but shoved a handful of chips into his mouth and crushed on them while she began to explain the legend that backed the mountain.

“The story goes that an old man hired a blacksmith to do a job, but he wouldn’t tell him what it was, only that he would pay him in a sack of gold and that he could never tell another soul about what he did.”

She began to pace with her face bright and exhilarated. It was a stark contrast to the Annabeth that I had come to know. 

“The old man asks the blacksmith to make a golden horseshoe and gives him the gold for the job. When the blacksmith finishes, the old man leads him to a cave in the mountain. This cave is large, dark, and full of sleeping knights standing in their armor, and horses with golden horseshoes,” she continued. “He tells the blacksmith to replace a broken horseshoe with the new one he’d made.”

She rushed back to the table and found a folded map, abandoning the book onto the pile of others. 

“When the blacksmith asks why they’re all asleep, the old man says it’s because they’re waiting for when they’re needed, that one day they will awaken to fight for Poland once again.” She began to unfold the map. “The story ends when the blacksmith goes back home, can’t keep his mouth shut, tells the story, and his gold turns to dust, but that’s not the important part. The cave would’ve been right about here.”

She pointed at a dip in the curve of mountains that fell into southern Europe. Just north, big white letters spelled out the city Krakow. 

“That’s where the hurricane started,” I realized. 

“Yes. And that’s where we’ll find Percy. I’m sure of it.”

“Let me get this straight,” Claire intervened. “You want to go halfway across the world, search for a cave that may or may not exist, waltz in without any clue about what’s inside, to save some guy who may or may not be alive, all based off of a hunch and some old legends?”

“In secret, of course. Nobody can find out about this, or we’ll lose the element of surprise, but, yes, that’s the plan,” Annabeth confirmed, not wavering under the accusation. 

“Sounds like my kind of plan, I’m in,” Claire agreed. 

“What about Jody? I thought you guys were going to coordinate extraction teams or whatever,” I wondered. Claire shrugged and began to poke at a bowl of salsa with a broken chip. 

“And that’s great, but I need to  _ do  _ something, or at least feel like it,” she explained. 

I nodded along. Knowing that I would be going on this mission because of the dreams I’d been having, Claire’s joining actually made me feel better. 

Later that night, Luke returned home from his rounds of checking up on nearby bases and collecting supplies to fill our fridge. Annabeth jumped on him about her discovery, but he didn’t show a satisfactory amount of enthusiasm, which caused them to argue about something completely different for a few hours. As you do.

That put Annabeth in a foul mood, but I still didn’t expect her to show up at my bedside while I was trying to get some rest. 

“How’s your ankle?” she asked. 

“Alright, Will says the fracture is healed, and the swelling should go down soon,” I explained while I sat up a little. He’d even let me take the cast off the day before. 

Annabeth stood over me and nodded gravely. 

“Get up,” she stated, and the tone of her voice told me more than her words. We were going to train, and I didn’t get a say in the matter. 

She walked me to the backyard where only the slowly rising moon gave any light to the darkness. She tossed me a sparring stick, and I barely caught it. 

“Tonight, you learn to think like a fighter,” she said. 

“Any reason you chose tonight?” I wondered while I twisted the staff in my hand nervously. 

“Because the second we find the means, we’re going to Poland. It will be dangerous, but I have no idea what kind of danger it will be. I also can’t make you stay. I tried that last time, and look where that got us.” She motioned to the air around here as if that was evidence enough. “So lift your staff.”

I did as I was told. Annabeth lunged at me with a wide sweeping motion of her stick, and I ducked under it, taking a step back to catch my bearings.

“Think faster,” she said.

She threw a hit to my side, and I blocked it with my staff. She barreled a volley of attacks, most of which I managed to dodge and block, but a few hit their mark, leaving sore spots on my shoulders and back. 

“Stop,” she sighed. 

I used my staff as support while I tried to catch my breath. 

“You’re not getting it.” She sounded almost defeated but mostly annoyed.

“What am I not getting?” I panted. The brisk night air was chilled in my lungs, but it did nothing to cool my skin.

“Try to hit me.”

I hesitated before swinging the stick at her chest. She blocked it easily, twisted the force of the attack around my own weapon, and sent me tumbling to the ground. 

“Do you see?” she asked.

I pulled myself up into a sitting position and dusted the dirt off of my elbows. 

“See what?” I snorted. “You just threw me to the ground.”

“Yes, because you weren’t defending yourself.”

“You told me to hit you,” I complained, and she smirked. 

“Exactly. You were distracted. Your opponent will always be distracted when they’re attacking you. Now get up. Let’s try it again.”

She circled back toward the center of the opening space we had been using, and I lifted myself to my feet. I let her words rattle around in my brain until I was sure I understood them and readied my weapon. 

She attacked. I dodged. I had become good at this dance. 

“Hit me,” she ordered, not once stopping her attacks. 

Every hasty block I made pushed me back, closer to the beach. I tried to focus, but not getting smacked in the face was holding most of my attention. I ducked under a swift slash of her stick and saw her stomach wide open. Annabeth’s voice hissed at me to hit her, so I threw my stick out to smack her in the exposed space. 

She caught it with her stick, the clack of mine against hers ringing through the silence that followed. She smiled.

Then she twisted her staff through mine, sending a sharp pain to my wrist, and forcing me to drop the stick to the ground. She held her staff to my throat to claim her victory.

“Again,” she declared.

I grabbed the staff. She attacked, and I blocked, but little by little, I got braver. I threw myself at her blindspots, and she caught me every time because she was still better than me, probably always would be better than me. It took nothing out of her to knock me to the ground yet again. 

“Up,” she said, and in her voice, there was finally a hint of a heavy breath. 

“Can I ask you something?” I panted, still on the ground. 

“What?”

“Just.” I took a few deep breaths. “Why are you really doing this?”

Her face stilled into a carving of a very critical statue, not the kind of statue people would rub the nose of for good luck. She looked ready to change the subject, tell me to do something, and I knew that I wouldn’t be able to disobey her. 

“I mean, I survived the last time, right?”

“By the skin of your teeth.”

“Claire said you gave me credit.”

“Because what you did was admirable, but I’m not stupid,” she sneered. “I know it was a last-ditch effort to survive.”

“It worked,” I defended. She shrugged. 

“It did, and it will probably work again given the right circumstances, or if it doesn’t, you’ll come up with some other way to survive. You’re not stupid either.”

She fiddled with the sparring stick, testing the weight in each of her hands and passing it back and forth between them. 

“So what’s the problem?” I asked her when she wasn’t inclined to explain herself. 

She sighed and let the stick settle in her right hand, its point pressed to the ground. 

“This world doesn’t need a survivor, Holly,” she said.” It needs a hero. So far, you’re not much of one.”

The words hit me harder than I expected them to. It wasn’t anything that I hadn’t already thought of myself, but hearing from Annabeth just confirmed my fears. I fiddled with the grass beside me and kept my eyes trained on the ground. 

“I know,” I admitted quietly. 

I heard her grumble to herself and picked my gaze up to see the look on her face. She was staring pointedly off into the distance and running a hand through her hair. 

“See and now you’re taking this the wrong way. You’re not a hero,  _ so far,  _ but I’ve made a hero before. I can do it again,” she said with the pride of a winner. 

Did she know that she was a hero? Had anyone ever told her? 

She held out her hand to help me to my feet, and I accepted. Brandishing her staff, we began again. The ache in my shoulders from swinging the heavy object made me grow sloppy. Annabeth took notice and pushed me harder. 

We went on like that for a long time before Sam wandered into my line of sight. In the small moment that he had distracted me, Annabeth knocked the staff out of my hand.

“What are you guys doing? It’s getting late,” Sam questioned as my stick clattered to the ground. 

“Training,” Annabeth replied. 

“Right.” He cleared his throat. “Don’t you think it’s time for a break?”

Annabeth studied him closely, raking her eyes up and down his face. 

“Fine,” she conceded and walked over to prop her sparring stick up against the house. Every muscle that had grown sore from the rigorous exercise sighed in relief. 

Annabeth strode inside a few steps ahead of me and Sam who hung back a second. He looked at me with his eyes pinched together and his mouth holding back a frown. 

“What?” I asked him.

“You know how I said I was going to stop acting like my father?”

“I remember,” I answered. 

He grew smaller before my eyes, something I didn’t think was possible for a man so tall.

“The way he raised me, I didn’t have a choice to live the life I’m living, and it’s...well, it’s the kind of life people should get to walk away from,” he concluded. 

“You want me to walk away?”

“No,” he corrected. “I want you to have the choice.”

I grappled with a response before I settled on a meek nod. We wandered inside after Annabeth to find her at the living room table, pouring over a stack of papers, her natural habitat. 

“Learning anything?” I asked her.

“Not much.” She gestured to a couple of seats across from her in an invitation to join her. Sam took it without the hesitation that stopped me from sitting. Nevertheless, I sat beside him, and I was at eye level with research I couldn’t begin to comprehend. 

“What are we looking for?” Sam asked.

“Something I might’ve missed.” She pushed a few photocopies towards us, sheets covered in notes and ponderings. 

I read over them in silence until I stumbled upon a photocopy of the prophecy pinned to the wall. The paper was much cleaner and whiter, but the scan of the coffee stains and creases spread shadows across the words. 

I skimmed the lines over in my head once again, and my eyes got stuck on the last phrase. 

“What does it mean,  **_nothing can save the owl nor the sword_ ** ?” I spoke up, breaking what had been a long and peaceful silence. 

Annabeth looked up from the notebook she was scribbling in, paused, then set down the pen in her hand. 

“It means I die,” she declared.

“What?” I pressed. 

“I’m the owl. It’s my mother’s sacred symbol, and a while ago she gave it to me,” she said, refusing to make eye contact. 

The concept didn’t make a lot of sense to me, giving a symbol.

“She gave you an owl?” I questioned. 

Annabeth looked ready to roll her eyes at me, but restrained herself, which I was grateful for.

“No, she gave me the symbol,” she emphasized. “Symbols are part of what made the gods powerful. They gave people something to look towards, but after the Shift, the gods started losing their power anyway. Most of them held onto the symbols because they kept them alive, but Athena gave them up, so we would have a better chance of winning.”

From what I understood about Athena, that seemed exactly like something she would do, the logical move in a game of war. 

“She gave all of them away?” I said.

Annabeth nodded and smirked in pride.

“Every last one. I’m not sure who got the others, but she gave me the owl, said I would need it. Apparently it’s a bit of a curse.”

“What about the sword? Is that another symbol?”

“No, we’re not sure about that one. I have my guesses, but nothing’s for certain,” she dismissed, and I knew that even if I were to ask her about her guesses, she wouldn’t give me any more information on the subject. 

I turned to look at the lines again, ran over the ones that mentioned a flame, expected there to be an answer, but I guess prophecies weren’t supposed to make sense until they’d already happened. 

Despite being tired from training, my eyes had been open for a long time when the sun came up. I was laying on my back uneasily, staring at the boards of the bed above me. 

A few people had stirred during the time I spent like that. One went downstairs to get to the shower before all the hot water ran out. When they came back up, I did the same, hoping it would stop my mind from running over the lines of the prophecy again and again. 

I didn’t want to believe that Annabeth was doomed. 

When I got out of the shower, others had started to wake up and get breakfast before taking off to their various adventures. I knew in a couple of days, a new group of people would come in, crash on the abandoned bunks, eat way too much pizza, and revel in the perfect water pressure of the shower. The beach house was a waystation, and although it wasn’t the only one, it was an important one. 

I scooped some scrambled eggs onto a plate and sprinkled shredded cheese all over the top. My sweats were sticking to the damp patches from drying off so quickly, and my hair was heavy with water that dripped onto my shoulders, but I had to admit that I was still comfortable sitting at the kitchen island, surrounded by people I didn’t know.

“Good morning,” one of the many unfamiliar faces greeted. 

“Morning,” I replied.

“Asa Fox,” the man introduced himself. “Mind if I sit?” He motioned to the only stool left at the table since the rest had been dragged into the living room with the rest of the bustle. 

“Not at all.” I swallowed a forkful of eggs. “I’m Holly.”

I shook his hand.

“Holly, huh? So, you’re the one everyone’s been fussing about?” He smirked. I felt heat rise in my cheeks.

“It appears to be that way, doesn’t it?” I responded. 

“And you’re going to Poland soon?” he continued, filling his own plate with food.

“Yeah.”

He studied me with his elbows on the table and his head cocked to the side. 

“To what, dance on the beach?” he joked.

“No, I imagine there won’t be much dancing,” I laughed, and his smile dropped. He frowned with his eyebrows pulled down. 

“How old are you, kid?”

“I’m seventeen,” I said easily, now that I understood where his sudden change in disposition came from. 

“You should get out while you still can.” He wagged a finger at me in a half-joking way, but I could see in his eyes the suggestion was deadly serious.

“To where?”  _ I don’t have anywhere else to go.  _

He seemed to hear the words I didn’t speak and nodded respectfully.

“Good morning, Holly,” Jody chirped when she walked into the kitchen. “Is Asa giving you a hard time?”

I chuckled. 

“Oh, you know,” Asa sighed. “Just teaching her Polish.”

Jody rolled her eyes and pushed a piece of toast into the toaster. I took the moment to dig into the rest of my breakfast and dump some more cheese onto it. Calories were key. 

“Can I have everyone’s attention please?”

I looked up to see Luke Castellan standing on a chair in the living room, addressing the crowd that quieted until not even a dull murmur could be heard. 

“I understand that many of you here today are hunters, and I know that hunters and half-bloods haven’t always had the greatest relationship. We’ve failed to communicate on multiple fronts when it comes to this war, and it’s cost us.”

Many in the crowd bowed their heads in remembrance of the tragedies he mentioned, but my eyes were trained on him.

‘“The successes I’ve had in getting us on the same page I owe entirely to Annabeth Chase, who most of you have met because she has the basic human decency of getting to know the people she wants to put their lives on the line,” he rambled. “She’s smarter than me. In many ways, she’s a better person than me, but she thinks she can do everything.”

I laughed only to find that the rest of the crowd had the same reaction.

“I’m sure you’ve heard she’s going to Poland, leaving soon as possible. She needs support, strong fighters, but I’m spread too thin, so I can’t offer it to her. She won’t wait, so I’m asking for anyone who is willing to stand by her side.”

He paused for a long time, and when he spoke again his tone was lighter and friendlier.

“And I’m asking now while she’s in the world trying to put this together so that she remains blissfully ignorant that I asked for help at all. Please, keep it that way. I really don’t want to piss her off.”

The crowd chuckled as he stepped off the chair and into the height of everyone else milling about. 

“So you need more fighters?” Asa queried from beside me. 

“I guess.” He raised his eyebrows at me. “Hey, they’re only taking me because they have to, so I’m not exactly in the loop.”

“Why exactly do they have to take you? Because you’re the savior?” The older man pressed with a sarcastic twirl to his words. 

“No, because I’m the only one who kind of knows what we’re looking for.” He waited for me to continue. “I’ve had dreams about it,” I explained. 

He nodded his understanding and chewed up a piece of hash brown before swallowing it and moving onto another piece.

“About Percy?” he asked, still messing with the potatoes.

“You know him?” I perked my ears to his response.

“No, just whispers really. I know he’s been out of the picture for some time now, I know that a lot of people are perfectly okay with that, and I know that I’m not supposed to know this Poland trip is about busting him out,” he listed.

Annabeth had been the one to tell me not to spread the word about what we were doing in Poland, that not everyone would be overjoyed with the idea, and that it could never get out to our enemies. 

“That’s a lot of whispering,” I concluded. “Who  _ did  _ tell you we were going to get Percy?”

“Jody.” He registered the concern on my face. “Relax, I get why it has to stay a secret. Besides, if I come with, what’s the harm?”

“So you’re coming now?” I raised my eyebrows at him.

“What can I say, I wanna dance on the beach,” he bragged. 

Annabeth returned later that afternoon to find that a few hunters were suddenly very enthusiastic about going to Poland. She was hesitant to accept any of their offers until a man covered in layers of flannel said he knew a guy with a plane. She suddenly became much more agreeable.

After almost everyone else had left, Annabeth gathered everyone set to take the journey in the living room. Harvey was there, Asa, Claire, but the others I had yet to meet. 

“Hello, I’m Annabeth Chase. Daughter of Athena, goddess of wisdom and battle strategy,” she recited more because she liked too than because any of us were unfamiliar with who she was. I readjusted myself on the couch I was sitting on. 

“This mission is going to do its very best to kill us. We are going to do our best not to let that happen, but we are at a disadvantage because we don’t know each other. On one hand, that means we have different fighting styles, sure, but we don’t trust each other, and that could be deadly.” I glanced around at the different faces that surrounded me, different ages, different styles of clothing, different gaits. She was right. I didn’t trust them.

“Creaser, I need you to call your contact with the airplane and have him land in a random field near here and send us the coordinates.” An old man who I assumed was Creaser nodded. “And until that plane gets here, we are going to spend every waking moment together. Starting now.”

Annabeth pulled up a chair of her own and sat down with her arms crossed, like staring was going to bring us closer together. Nobody dared move under her watchful gaze, but I could feel the discomfort as they itched to leave the room. 

“I’m Holly,” I said to break the tension. “I’m mortal I guess.” 

I jabbed Harvey with my toe where he was sitting on the floor in front of me with his back against the couch. 

“Uh, yeah, Harvey. Son of Hephaestus, blacksmith of the gods, god of forges, fire, machines, and stuff,” he stuttered. 

“I’m Asa Fox, and I’m an alcoholic.” His simple phrase did more to break the tension than my attempts had, but either way, the ball was rolling. 

The pale man who was getting us a plane was Martin Creaser, and he was a good friend of Sam’s father. The woman with the dark brown eyes leaning against the wall was Tamara, and she specialized in killing vampires just like the man next to her, Gordon Walker. The large man sitting in the recliner chair with a buzz cut was Frank Zhang, son of Mars, and he could shapeshift. Then there was the woman in the bright red hair who sat with her legs crossed in the chair that Luke usually occupied. She had her arms splayed out across the arms like it was her thrown, and when she said her name, she lifted her chin in the air with pride. 

“Rowena Macleod. I’m a witch.” She had a thick Scottish accent, and her mouth pursed around the words like they were freshly picked lemons. She was the one I trusted the least. 

I knew that meant she was the one I had to get to know, so when the chatter broke into smaller groups, I turned to the redhead seated near me. 

“A witch?” I started. She studied me with a flick of her eyes.

“Yes, dearie,” she jeered. 

I searched for something else to say while I was stuck under her gaze. 

“And you’re Sam’s little project,” she crooned when I failed to say anything. 

“You know Sam?” I asked.

“We’ve met. He’s the one who called me here after all.”

I was finding it hard to focus on her words instead of her accent, but the message still processed enough for me to respond.

“He did?” I said.

“Yes, he thought it would be in my best interest to see that this mission doesn’t fail.” She grinned and glanced around the room as if assessing her chance. 

“And why’s that?” I asked. 

“If you lose, and Dean wins, he’ll kill me,” she responded with a sigh. 

I wrinkled my forehead and leaned forward a little.

“Did you do something to piss him off?” I pushed.

She frowned and shook her head. 

“Not really, but he’s drunk on power, and since I’m the one that gave it to him, I’m sure he thinks I know how to take it away.” She punctuated the explanation with a flutter of her fingers with delicately painted nails.

“Why would you give a demon more power?” I accused her, my trust in the witch only decreasing.

She arched her eyebrows and stared directly into my eyes.

“Darling, you don’t know?” She took my silence as confirmation. “He was human, dead set on saving the world, so he burdened himself with an evil nobody dared touch, and I helped him. When he went bad, I tried to rip the bloody thing off of him, but it didn’t budge.”

“He was human?”

The thought almost gave me hope.

“He was, but that doesn’t mean he can be saved,” she warned me, reading my mind. 

We all slept in the same vicinity in the attic under Annabeth’s orders. Apparently sleeping near a hunter I’d never met would give me faith in their judgment.

When my dreams came, I was expecting them. 

I saw Percy only for a moment, alone in his prison, humming to himself, and then the scene changed. 

The new room had marble floors, a long table, a flickering fire, and two figures, one pacing in front of the fireplace. Both of them had the same dark hair, the same pale skin, and the same long and narrow features, but the boy pacing in front of the fire didn’t hold himself with the same grace as the girl who stood with her arms crossed to the side. 

“Are you sure?” the boy asked.

“Of course I’m sure,” she sneered at his doubt. The smaller boy sighed, and his shoulders slouched. 

“Do we have to attack?” he complained, which only seemed to agitate the other more. She uncrossed her arms and took a step forward. 

The boy stopped pacing to meet her gaze. 

“Are you suggesting that we roll over?” she questioned him. 

He moved around as he began his explanation, sending his shadow to tickle the edge of the dark wood table.

“You have plenty of souls, plenty of power, why can’t this be enough?” he sighed.

She pursed her lips and thought.

“Because they’re still threatening me, trying to take away this life that I built for us.” She gestured with her arms to the elegant room surrounding them. 

“Is this about the giant you lost?” the boy asked.

“No.”

“Bianca-” she glared at him. “You’re spiraling, people are dying, and for what?”

She whirled on him, and her hair whipped around to follow her.

“For our family. Don’t you see? If we win this, we are in charge. We get to write the rules. We can make sure people get justice-”

“I know,” he interrupted her with a solemn glance at the floor. 

“Then, are you with me?” she said, much quieter now.

The dark-haired boy looked up at her and gave a small nod.

“Always,” he replied. 


	8. We Take a Nose-Dive. Literally. It Was Terrifying

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> they begin their journey to poland  
> it ends in disaster  
> obviously  
> don't come at me for travel times, bc I calculated that shit

The plane arrived at sunset. It landed in a field that was a forty-five minute drive away from the beach house, all of which I was stuck next to Harvey who wouldn’t stop fidgeting. 

Outside of the aircraft, a tall man stood with his arms crossed, waiting for us to cross the field. The closer I got, the easier it was to notice the product in his hair and the neat tailoring of his blazer. 

“How does Creaser know this guy again?” I said into Harvey’s ear.

“No idea.” 

We approached the mystery man.

“You must be Bradshaw, I’m Annabeth Chase, daughter of Athena,” she recited her heredity like it was the second part of her name.

“Good to meet you,” said Bradshaw, shaking her hand. 

“Were you spotted on your way here?” she quizzed. I wasn’t entirely sure how someone could be spotted tens of thousands of feet in the air. 

“Can’t say, but I can also get access to some boats if you need,” he offered. 

“No, we can afford to waste any more time,” Annabeth insisted. 

“Yeah, but even if I wasn’t spotted, flying’s probably the worst idea.” The words tumbled out of his mouth like a warning, but little did he know they were going to land as a challenge. 

Annabeth straightened. 

“We’re just going to have to take that risk,” she said. 

Bradshaw clenched his teeth together and studied her cold glare warily.

“Fine. All aboard then,” he invited us onto the plane. 

Once inside, it was obvious that it was a cargo plane since the back was bare save for a few haphazardly tossed blankets and pillows. Creaser got on his case about not finding a plane with actual seats, but Bradshaw only threatened not to fly at all. Creaser sat next to him as copilot with only a few unintelligible grumbles.

The rest of us sat in the back, claiming pillows and blankets before the sunset completely, and we would try to chase after whatever shreds of sleep we could get. 

I was too restless to sleep. 

The swaying of the aircraft through the aircraft could’ve been soothing if it wasn’t for the thoughts racing through my brain. With every second that passed, my brain thought up another danger to remind me of, another terror that I was diving headfirst into. 

“Can’t sleep?” Claire spoke up. 

“I know I should, but…” I trailed off.

“Yeah me neither,” she sighed. 

Rowena was the only one other than us that was still awake, and she sat gracefully propped against the back wall of the plane with her legs folded. 

“You know this is the first time I’ve been on a plane?” Claire started. I turned my head toward her to let her know I was listening. “Figures it’s my transportation to the middle of nowhere with a fifty-fifty shot of me getting out alive.”

“It’s my first time too if that makes you feel any better,” I offered, and she laughed quietly in response, which was a victory in and of itself. 

“Surprisingly, that does,” she sighed. 

We made idle chit chat and played rock paper scissors for the better part of two hours when the plane started to rattle a little more aggressively, and it didn’t stop. Claire and I shared a look, and she hobbled to the cockpit.

“Creaser?” she called. “What’s going on?” A particularly aggressive jolt sent her toppling sideways into the side of the plane. 

“We’re caught in some kind of storm, but it didn’t show up on the radar,” I heard him respond.

“Shit,” Claire sighed. 

I peered out the window at the murky gray clouds that swirled angrily around us, the bolts of lightning that dashed through the rain in a way that reminded me distinctly of Tempus and the wind spirits.

Around me, the hunters had begun to stir, but Annabeth was still fast asleep next to Frank who was currently a bulldog. I pulled myself up against the vigorous shaking of the plane and knelt beside Annabeth. 

I shook her awake. 

“What?” she hissed through bleary eyes. 

“I think we’re under attack,” I explained. 

She looked around at the people grasping for support and the ever-darkening sky. She shot up. 

“Where are we?” she asked. 

I stumbled to find the stack of maps behind the pilot’s seat and handed them to her. Creaser read out a series of coordinates while she opened the sheets as far as she could. 

Annabeth traced the measurements, which landed her in the sea between England and Norway. She looked out the window at the blue bolts of electricity that threatened us too close. 

A rod of lightning reached to strike us out of the sky, but it was blocked by a scattered purple force. I glanced back at the cargo hold to see Rowena, still sitting with her legs folded, muttering while her eyes glowed with the same dangerous purple hue. 

“Rowena,” Annabeth called. She looked up from her spell. “How long can you hold him off?”

“Oh, I don’t have any more ash to do that spell again. He burned it up.”

“Do a different spell then. Keep us alive,” she ordered.

“Him?” I butted in.

“Jason Grace. He found us.”

The plane shook and almost doubled over, but Bradshaw careened it back into an upright position. 

The jolt woke Frank, and he stood into his human form. He looked to Annabeth with a question in his eyes. She only nodded. 

He frowned. 

“What’s the plan?” I asked. 

Annabeth looked at me and took a deep breath. 

“You are going to find anything on this plane that can be used as a life raft. Frank, I need you outside, Rowena will have your back. Harvey, do whatever you can to keep this plane from exploding. The rest of you, empty your pockets, give Rowena anything that can be used in a spell.”

Asa began to pull an assortment of foreign coins out of his pocket and a hex bag with a pentagram on it. Sam had made me use the same one to hide me from demons. 

“Bradshaw, get us to the Gulf of Gdansk.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

The next stretch of time went by alarmingly fast. I opened every hatch I could find in search of a life raft. It was only when I found one towards the back with big red lettering did I have any luck. Inside, was a blow-up raft and two life preservers. 

“I’m opening the hatch!” Frank warned. I grabbed firmly onto the handle of the emergency box and prepared myself for the blast of air. 

I wasn’t prepared. 

The rush of wind pulled my skin tight against my face. Tamara slid into my side from somewhere farther up in the cargo hold. I grabbed onto her instinctively until the roaring of the wind faded away with the loud bang of the hatch closing. 

“Thanks,” Tamara gasped. 

“Yeah, don’t mention it.”

Something outside the plane exploded, and we began swirling through the air. I tumbled around the cabin, searching for something to ground myself, but everything whirled by too fast for me to keep track of. 

Asa’s coin clattered across the metal of the plane. Someone’s foot landed on my stomach only to disappear a moment later in the chaos. 

With a jerk that left my stomach far behind, the plane began to straighten itself out. I landed on the floor in a heap along with everyone else. We groaned and began to haul ourselves back to work. 

“What in the damn hell was that?” Gordon complained. 

“The right engine went out,” Creaser answered calmly, but the deepening wrinkles around his eyes gave away the danger we were in. 

Through the front window, I saw a bright green dragon with the fangs of a saber-toothed tiger launching after a man with blond hair and a golden sword. The dragon was spewing flames at him, but he floated through the air like he was born to, dodging only to lash out with his sword. 

While Rowena scrambled to pull her spells back together, the dragon took a few hits from the glowing blade. 

I began to blow up the life raft.

Before I could finish, Claire appeared at my side and snatched the raft away from me. 

“Rowena needs you,” she said. 

“What for?”

“A spell, apparently you’re the only one with untainted blood.” 

I paused as I grappled with what that could possibly mean, but Claire became impatient and dragged me to my feet. 

“Go! I’ve got the raft,” she urged. 

I stumbled to the back where Rowena had set up a series of weird things. Her eyes still shone purple.

“Do you have a knife?” she questioned. I pulled out my dagger from my boot. “Good. I need your blood.”

“What?”

“Oh, don’t get squeamish now. It won’t kill you, but I need it right now, so chop chop.”

I heard the screaming of fire and pain outside. Annabeth hollered orders for people to keep us in the air, get us to the gulf, keep us alive. I knew I had to trust her despite everything that told me not to. I dragged the blade across my wrist and held the wound over the bowl of herbs and loose coins. 

Rowena began chanting Latin phrases that meant nothing to me, and the cut bit at me angrier with every passing second. 

I felt myself start to sweat, and my arm grew weak from holding it in the air while the plane tossed and turned around me. 

Rowena wrapped a piece of cloth around my arm and tied it tightly. 

I sat down beside her, catching my breath, as she hollered the last line of the spell. 

A wave of purple light expanded from the bowl and thrust out into the air. For a moment, the winds faded and the thunder quieted. The rattle of the broken engine disappeared entirely, and we began to fly straighter. 

I looked out the small window across from me and saw the dark grey storm crawling closer still. 

“Where are we right now?” Annabeth asked Creaser, whose eyes hadn’t moved from the map since Annabeth gave the order to head for the gulf. 

“Just south of this island, heading for the coast of Poland,” he responded. 

She looked outside at the storm. She looked down the cargo hold at her battered crew and the life raft that Tamara was using as a sickbed to patch a cut on Asa’s head. I watched the resolve form in her eyes. 

“Land the plane.”

“What? Are you crazy?” Bradshaw objected.

Creaser added on, “Annabeth, we’re in the middle of the water... if we could just buy a little more time-”

“We don’t have any more time. He will kill us all, and he will enjoy it, so get us out of the air right now, or I will,” she shot with the fire of a dragon. 

As if to emphasize her point, the wind teased the tail of the plane, twisting us back and forth. 

“Hold on,” Bradshaw said while he flipped switches and tilted the nose of the plane toward the dark sea. 

I grasped the side of the plane with my hand and willed myself not to throw up as gravity became optional under the will of the aircraft. I saw the waves hurtling toward us through the windows. The wind chased us mercilessly, shaking my breakfast around in my gut. 

We could’ve been inches from the surface or miles. The distance didn’t seem to change at all as we fell. Then we were flattening, grazing the water with our landing skids. Sprays from the sea dampened my window. 

“I can’t hold this for very long!” Bradshaw warned as the plane already began to stumble. 

Annabeth yanked open the doors of the plane, and the wind came blasting in all over again. Suddenly I could hear the roars of the dragon keeping our enemy at bay. Annabeth tied a rope to the life raft and then to the hinge of the door before tossing it out into the open water. 

“We have to time this perfectly,” she told everyone. “Bradshaw will turn it on autopilot-”

“He will?” Bradshaw interrupted, obvious concern flooding his features. 

“He will. We will have almost no time before the plane crashes. If you don’t jump before then, you will drown with the plane, understood?”

There was a series of shy nods, but nobody moved. 

I stood, grasping at the walls to keep my balance. 

“Fuck it. This isn’t the first time you’ve asked me to jump into a large body of water. Let’s do it.”

My mask of cockiness encouraged the rest of our crew to hobble to their feet and follow Annabeth to the door. We stood with our shoulders pressed together, watching the waves rush by below us, and the reflection of the moon bounce along with the dips in sea level. Annabeth threw her bag over her shoulders.

“Ready?” she asked Bradshaw. 

“On your call,” he replied. 

“Switch it to autopilot in three.”

The plane began to dip, and its bad engine whirred.

“Two.”

The dragon cried and fell through the air under a bolt of lightning. 

“Now!” 

The roar of the engine faded completely, and the plane stilled. I felt it lurch under the sudden pull of the earth, but before I could feel the tip of its nose as it dove into the water, I was being pulled into the open air.

My feet scrambled to find purchase as we floated through the breeze. The water crashed around me. It was cold. It was salty. It was also a lot easier to swim when I wasn’t concussed with a broken ankle. 

To my right, I saw Annabeth scrambling to cut the life raft free from the sinking plane while keeping the straps of her backpack over her shoulders. The water around it churned furiously and threatened to suck us all in. We had to fight to stay afloat. 

With one more hack at the rope, the raft gave way and bobbed happily across the tall waves. One by one, we pulled ourselves up onto the boat, shaking from the cold. 

We didn’t fit, not comfortably at least. I had to sit on Claire’s lap directly across from where Rowena sat with her knees tucked underneath her. Her eye makeup now stained her cheeks a dark blue. 

The water around where the plane had crashed bubbled, but other than that and the sounds of heavy breathing, it was quiet. 

Then a loud splash startled us all from our trance. 

The dragon, Frank, had been struck from the sky, falling into the sea below. The air still thundered above him, but it was slowly fading now that we’d escaped his territory. 

Frank became a dolphin and swam slowly toward our raft.

He was human again once he arrived, breathing hard and bleeding. He laid out over our legs while Annabeth scrambled for ambrosia in her soaked backpack. 

After eating some of the magic food, Frank was doing a lot better. He was less pale, and a few of the smaller gashes had closed.

“You up to turn again?” Annabeth wondered after he’d eaten another square.

“What do you need?” he asked in return. 

“We have to get around that outpost of land right there.” She pointed to where a line of trees broke through the endless blue. 

“Okay. You sound like you know what you’re doing. I’m in.”

“Don’t patronize me, I always know what I’m doing,” she teased.

Frank smiled, and the gesture seemed ancient and forgotten across his hard features. He stood as much as he could on the inflatable boat and wobbled toward the edge. He dove into the water with a crash, and when he resurfaced, he was a mako shark.

Annabeth tossed the severed rope into the water, so he could latch on, and we were cutting through the water at a speed that was sure to get us there before midnight. 

Tamara passed me a bag of soggy trail mix.

“Thanks,” I murmured while I picked through the raisins to gather the nuts.

“Payback for catching me on the plane,” she said with a British accent that I hadn’t noticed before.

I laughed and readjusted myself on Claire’s lap, so I could face her. She was propped up against Creaser with her feet draped over Bradshaw’s legs. 

“You know,” I started. “I’m tired of being afraid.” 

She nodded, and I heard Claire snore from where her head was leaned against my shoulder. 

“Then stop being afraid.”

I raised my eyebrows at her. 

“I’m serious,” she continued. “Do you know how I got into this?”

I shook my head and tried not to jostle Claire.

“A wraith killed my daughter, sucked her brain from her head.” She leaned forward and the light of the moon flickered across her dark cropped hair. “When she died, my husband and I turned to hunting. We did it for two different reasons. Isaac was afraid that the thing that killed her would get someone else. He fought every fight afraid that he would lose.”

She turned to the water as we bounced across it.

“Soon, that fear turned to anger. It made him reckless, and it got him killed.” She frowned at the sea below. “Don’t let yourself be afraid.”

“You say that like it’s easy.”

“It’s not, but it’s how you’ll survive.” She became urgent. “Why are you fighting?”

“Uh- I don’t know. I’m the Savior or whatever,” I mumbled.

“You need a better reason,” she pressed. I paused to think it over under the weight of her stare. 

“Everything is different now,” I explained. “It’s dark. Cold. My home wasn’t enough to make me stay, so I’m hoping if we win, I can go home again, and it will be warm like I remember it being.” My voice grew low until the words came out barely above the sounds of the waves.

Tamara placed her hand on mine, which reminded me how cold the rest of my body was. 

“Hold onto that,” she insisted, looking into my eyes with ferocity.

I nodded my confirmation, and she smiled at me before curling up to go to sleep. I tried to do the same and buried myself into the pile of body heat to hide from the frigid breeze, but my wet clothes shocked me awake every time I dozed off. 

I must’ve spent hours like that before the raft finally slowed to a gentle crawl, and Gordon began waking everyone from their slumber. 

It was lighter out than I remembered when I closed my eyes, but that might’ve been the time I had to adjust because the stars were still out, and the night lights around the edges of the docks were still on. 

“Bradshaw?” Annabeth sighed once we were all on the dock, leaving the raft to bob in the water below. 

“Let me guess, you’ve got a crazy idea?”

“You’re a quick learner,” she replied. “How’d you get that plane?”

“How do you mean?”

“Well you’re not rich, as much as you’re trying to convince me with the haircut and the blazer, so what? You know a guy? You have a way with words? You’ve slept with the right people?” she listed. 

“I see. Well, I’ve found that in life, the best way to get things is to take them,” he stated simply.

“You’re a thief.”

He narrowed his eyes at her. 

“I didn’t hear you judging when I was flying you across the ocean.” 

Annabeth shook her head, and I saw the hint of a smirk grace her lips. 

“No, it’s perfect,” she corrected. “Ever steal a boat?”

Bradshaw let his shoulders relax now that he knew he wasn’t gearing up to defend himself, but rather, they were on the same side again. 

He started, “Well, I know jack shit about sailing-”

“Buddy, just get me a boat, I’ll take care of the rest.”

He smiled.

“Where to?”

“Do you see that river delta over there?” She nodded her head toward where the gulf bled into the land. “There,” she finished. 

“Alright. Let’s go shopping.”

We wandered around the marina for a while, picking out a boat. Asa wanted a large steamboat, but Annabeth shot it down, saying that we would have to go down some pretty narrow rivers. 

Claire stopped to look at a small sailboat with flower-patterned seat covers and Christmas lights along the rails even though it was almost summer.

“What about this one?” she said. 

We stopped to examine the boat further. 

“It’s kind of dinky looking,” Harvey commented. 

“It looks like the kind of boat that’s taken out once a year, so they won’t come looking for it,” Claire elaborated. “It’s small, it’s got a cabin. It’s probably got dry towels, which we should use before we all get hypothermia.”

“I agree,” Annabeth chimed in. 

“Are you saying yes to this boat?” Bradshaw grinned. 

“Just hotwire the bloody thing already,” Rowena groaned as she stomped onboard. 

Bradshaw and Annabeth went to the steering room to get us going, but everyone else clambered into the cabin below in search of towels and dry clothes. 

The space was cramped but well-equipped. There was a sink with cupboards along one wall, and along the other was a pair of bunk beds cutting into the wall. Underneath the old mattresses, were drawers full of towels, beach shorts, and Hawaiian shirts. 

I couldn’t find it in me to care when I peeled the wet clothes from my body in front of everyone else, doing the exact same. The clothes came in two sizes: XXXXXL and skinny toddler. I chose the large because it was easier to tie the shorts all the way than to hope I could fit into the smaller ones. 

Frank shifted into a bulldog and collapsed on the floor in exhaustion. Rowena claimed the bottom bunk and told Asa to wake her up when we were in mortal peril again. He only scoffed. 

I followed Claire up the stairs to the main level. The breeze was steady around us, but I wrapped myself tighter in the large beach towel to stay warm. Annabeth had us on a course down the river, and at every bend, she steered us down a different route. I assumed she knew where we were since I only had a vague notion.

Tamara and Asa emerged from the cabin and joined me and Claire on the benches. We sat in silence for a long time, and I felt myself drifting off. I laid down, someone pulled a blanket over me, and I was finally able to sleep. 

I awoke to the sun beating down on my face and yells coming from nearby. I peeled open my eyes to see that everyone’s wet clothes had been laid out to dry, and at some point, we’d stopped for food along the coast because there were bags of food with fast food logos stamped across the front. 

“Rise and shine, sleepyhead,” Asa cheered. I glared at him. 

“What time is it?”

“Eight or so, last time I checked,” he replied and passed me a greasy food bag. “Eat up.”

I peered inside to see an assortment of fries, burgers, and sandwich wraps. I began to pick at the food while I watched Gordon and Claire argue for entertainment. 

Clarie was adamant to prove the plane couldn’t have been saved, but Gordon wouldn’t budge, posing what-if’s left and right. 

Harvey appeared at my side, distracting me from my previous engagement.

“Thank goodness you’re awake. They won’t stop talking about the war. It’s exhausting,” he groaned and flopped down by where my feet were still stretched out over the bench.

“I’m afraid I won’t be much better. There’s not a lot else on my mind,” I admitted. 

Harvey rolled his eyes. 

“Come on, we finally have a peaceful moment, and nobody can get their minds off the bad parts? Look around, it’s downright gorgeous outside.”

I peered at the riverside, bustling with morning life. We glided down the river which shone from the warm glow of the sun. A small breeze kept the air from becoming too warm. 

“You’re right. It’s gorgeous.” I offered him a french fry, which he took despite his grumbles. 

I sat forward, resting my elbows on my knees, so I could ask him a question that had been rattling around in the back of my mind for a long time. 

“Do you know who Bianca is?” I asked. 

He whipped his gaze to meet my eyes, and his eyebrows shot up.

“Don’t call her that,” he warned.

“Why?”

“She hates it. We call her Angella now or the Princess.”

The pieces slowly began to click into place. The woman in my dream with the determination of a winner was the current leader of the Underworld. That meant that the smaller boy, the one who called her Bianca, had to be her brother. 

“And Nico is her brother?” I clarified. Harvey nodded. “What does it mean if Nico fights with her?”

“She gets more power. Nico’s not one to switch sides, and so far, he’s been out of the equation. Do you know something?”

“I had a dream that Nico agreed to fight with her,” I explained.

“That’s just great,” Harvey sighed heavily. Then he stole another one of my fries. “Thanks for the talk, but I’m going to try my luck with the fish.”

He stormed off without any real malice for my choice of conversation. My eye caught on Annabeth and Bradshaw tossing a ball of trash back and forth as they manned the steering wheel. 

I got up, stretched, and made my way to their alcove. I tapped on the door with my knuckles before opening it. Despite the several windows and the draft coming in from almost every angle, it was a great deal cooler on the inside. 

“Holly,” Annabeth greeted, catching the wad and holding it in her lap. Her legs were poised on the dashboard with her ankles crossed over each other. 

I realized they were waiting for me to speak, so I pulled a wooden stool out from the corner of the room and sat down. 

“I think Nico’s chosen to fight with the Princess,” I blurted before I could change my mind.

Annabeth sighed. 

“I was afraid of that,” she muttered, looking down at her lap. 

Bradshaw glanced back and forth between Annabeth and I so much I thought he’d get dizzy, but all I saw was confusion on his face. 

“Was there anything else in the dream that could help us?” Annabeth directed. 

“I never said it was a dream.”

“Wasn’t it?”

I didn’t argue but instead, answered her previous question. 

“I don’t remember much,” I began while I wracked my brain. “They were only talking about the attack and the souls at stake.”

“Right,” Annabeth sighed. 

Bradshaw cleared his throat to catch our attention. 

“You wanna tell me what’s going on?” he suggested. Annabeth gave him a quick once over before giving him the satisfaction of a response. 

“Not really,” she decided. 

“I just crashed a million-dollar plane into the sea for you, and you don’t think I deserve a little quid pro quo?”

Annabeth swung her legs down from the console and looked him in the eye. 

“Look, I don’t have anything against you, but I just don’t know you. I don’t trust you. And I’m not particularly inclined to give you all the details on what we know at this point.”

“So he’s supposed to just blindly go along with what you tell him to?” I quoted her from when we’d first met, and she’d answered some of my burning questions. 

She glared at me, but there was no real malice behind it. She was realizing I was right. Her ears turned a light shade of pink. 

“He’s free to leave at any moment,” she argued. 

“Is he?” I pressed. 

“Fine. Whatever. Ask your damn questions, Bradshaw.” She slammed the wad of paper they had been throwing back and forth onto the desk in front of her and crossed her arms over her chest. 

Bradshaw found himself stuck with his mouth open as he grappled for a question he didn’t think he’d get to ask. 

“Where are we going?” he started. 

I frowned. He didn’t know where we were going?

“Mount Giewont,” Annabeth stated. 

“I know that, why?” he groaned. 

“It’s a rescue mission. We’re retrieving an old friend of mine from one of Dean’s hostage locations.”

Bradshaw wasn’t buying it, but I didn’t dare but in on this particular subject. 

“Why does a rescue mission need four hunters, a centuries-old witch, and two of the Seven?” he wondered. 

Annabeth uncrossed her arms at the last bit of information. 

“Where did you hear that term?” she asked. 

“Which one?” 

“The Seven,” I answered for her. “What does it mean?”

“It’s another prophecy, one that’s already passed. It refers to me and six others.”

“The most powerful half-bloods of their generation,” Bradshaw recited. “Or so they used to be before the Shift. I heard it in whispers. Hunters talk,” he explained. 

Annabeth paused to study him. I tried to think of who the other six could be. If there were two on this ship, then the other must be Frank. After seeing him turn into a dragon, I didn’t feel so bad about casting Harvey aside as a non-option. Percy must be another, Jason, the Princess, Nico, Grace, how many was that?

“If you know about us,” Annabeth began, interrupting my train of thought. “Then I’m sure you can guess where we’re going,” she challenged, leaning back in her seat. 

Bradshaw furrowed his brow.

“Come on,” Annabeth continued. “A hostage location halfway across the world, I’m sure you’ve heard of the freak hurricane that formed around there, an army of trained fighters, the Praetor on our tail, make your best guess.” She was taunting him now. She wanted to scare him, maybe to get back at him for prying the information out of her, maybe she was just generally upset about being called a hypocrite.

Either way, understanding dawned across Bradshaw’s face. It smoothed the lines on his forehead and dropped his clenching jaw. 

“The son of Poseidon,” he breathed. “He’s on our side?”

Annabeth shook her head. 

“He’s on  _ my _ side. Like I said. We don’t know each other," she threatened.


	9. My Mother Grounds Me From Beyond the Grave

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> some spn style monsters  
> character death  
> not major  
> but kind of graphic??? idk I'm desensitized

We floated down the river all day. I was beginning to understand what people meant when they said sea-legs because with every bounce and dip of the waves I kept my balance. 

I was sitting at the front of the boat, munching on another cheeseburger, when the river opened up into a lake, and the town faded into the horizon. Without the bustling of people and the noise from traffic, I could hear the bubbling of the water more clearly. 

“Do you have any more ketchup?” Tamara asked me, and I dug around through my trash to find a stray packet or two to give to her. 

She accepted it wordlessly, and the peaceful silence returned. I let myself relax in the evening sun.

That was my mistake. 

The boat shuddered violently, jerking me out of my trance. I scanned my surroundings just in time to see a creature, hairless and bony with pits for eyes, splash onboard. I heard the sound of blades being unsheathed and scrambled to find my dagger. 

Claire ran at it with a knife raised, ready to strike, but it caught her wrist. Claire fought against the monster’s grip when it turned into a human girl with dark wavy hair and caramel-colored skin. 

Claire’s face changed, a broad smile replacing her angry grimace. 

“Kaia?” she gasped. “I thought you were dead, what are you doing here?”

The creature released Claire’s arm and glanced around at the rest of us. Gordon inched forward and brandished his machete. 

“It’s me, Claire. I had to see you, but they’re trying to send me back. They’re trying to kill me,” she rambled.

Claire gently wiped a tear from the monster's cheek.

“They’ll have to go through me,” she declared. 

Gordon raised his machete to slice at the monster, but she screamed, and Claire whirled, blocking the strike with her knife. They fought as the monster Kaia goaded Claire on. Tamara moved to help, but a wiry hand landed on her shoulder, quickly morphing into the skin of a tall man with skin darker than hers.

I stood helplessly at the bow with a dagger in my hand while I watched Tamara turn to Creaser and fight him ferociously. 

Asa hurled into my side, sending both of us toppling to the floor. Where I had been standing was another one of the grotesque figures. The shadows on its face bent with the light as it walked toward us. 

Asa yanked me to my feet. 

“Don’t let it touch you,” he ordered. 

“What is it?”

“A siren.”

The creature before us changed its appearance into a tall woman with silky blonde hair. 

“Well, well, well. Mr. Fox,” she crooned, reaching a hand to stroke his arm. Before she could reach his skin, Asa sliced off her hand with a single swipe of his machete.

The creature bellowed and jumped back, staring at the stub as a new hand quickly grew to take its place. 

“That’s no way to treat a lady,” she hissed and lunged at Asa. 

He dodged, and I threw an old burger at her head. She whipped her head around to me. I backed up until the back of my thighs collided with the railing surrounding the edge of the boat. I glanced around for an escape route, but all I saw was a crew turned against itself. Annabeth was holding her own, fighting away the touch of several monsters. Bradshaw was compromised. Rowena was nowhere to be seen. 

The monster in front of me changed form. Its blonde hair shortening to her shoulders, darkening to a deep brown. Her shoulders softened with the skin around her eyes. 

“Mom?” I choked. 

“Holly Serenity Fitz, you have had me worried sick about you!” she scolded. I felt a sob crack in my throat. “Not a single phone call in months? Are you serious? You are  _ so  _ grounded.”  _ It wasn’t real.  _ “I missed you. Now, come on, it’s time to go home.”

She held out her hand for me to take. 

I knew I shouldn’t, that she was a monster, not my mother, but she was  _ here _ . And her eyes were the same shade of hazelnut that I remembered, and her voice was the same one that had sung me old jazz songs instead of lullabies, and I wondered if it really mattered that she wasn’t real. She was here. 

I lowered my dagger shakily and reached my other hand out to her. 

She smiled, but it dropped when a machete hacked through her neck. She collapsed onto the floor, fading back into the monster that had attacked my ship. 

Harvey stood over the body, bloody machete in hand. 

“Did she get you?” he asked. 

I shook my head without tearing my eyes from the corpse that had been my mother. The sight of a blade peeling through the skin around her neck, splitting the mole that she always picked at, blinked through my head. 

“Great. I hate to break it to you, but we’re the only ones.”

I looked up to the sea of carnage. The sirens stood by, in one form or another, cheering on their victims as they fought their friends to the death. 

A siren dressed as a man in a dark coat massaged Rowena’s shoulders as she sat with her eyes closed on a beach chair. Annabeth had someone who looked like Percy Jackson behind her, encouraging her to not hold back. 

“What are we supposed to do?” I muttered. Harvey tossed me a machete that was laying on the ground. I caught it with a shaking hand and stowed my dagger back in my boot.

“Decapitation works,” he said. “You cover me, I’ll cover you.”

He sprinted around the side of the ship, and I stumbled to catch up. The ship lurched beneath my feet as Rowena cast a spell at Frank, and I struggled to keep my balance. 

Harvey led me away from those we knew, and into the gathering of sirens who toyed with their prey. I learned quickly that he was much better at the machete than I was. We dodged the blades of our crewmates and kept to the sidelines. 

It did nothing to stop the sirens from noticing us. The one that looked like Kaia rounded on us, leaving Gordon and Claire to their fight. It lashed out to touch me. I dropped to the floor. 

Harvey went to cut off the creature's head, but it blocked with its hand, the severed limb flopping to the floor. With the other, the siren grabbed Harvey’s face and stared into his eyes. 

In the moment it took for me to haul myself to my feet, the siren hadn’t changed from the dark-haired girl. 

“Where’s your soul, boy?” it hissed, squeezing Harvey’s face in its grip. 

I knew this scene. Harvey’s life flickering out before my eyes. A jolt of adrenaline rocketed through me, and I brought my blade down on the girl’s neck. 

When it didn’t cut through in one blow, I lifted and hacked again. Again. Again. It took five for the head to fall away and the monster’s hand to release Harvey, but I continued after that until I’d beaten the corpse over a dozen times. 

“Holly, stop!” Harvey called to me, and I halted my assault on the siren. 

I was on my knees now. My face was wet with tears and monster blood. I heard yelling around us. I got to my feet. 

In front of me, Claire blinked aggressively and hesitated in her strikes. Gordon tried to stab her in the gut, and she jumped back before he could. 

“What’s happening?” she hollered, dodging slices of Gordon’s machete. 

“Sirens,” I explained. 

She looked around for the monsters masked by human faces. The siren that looked like Isaac ran after me, and I jumped onto the bench like a toddler with nowhere else to go. I could see the other side of the raised steering room from here, where Annabeth was whipping her sword at Bradshaw’s throat. He dodged. Creaser distracted her for a moment. 

The siren that had been chasing me reached out to grab my feet where I was poised on the bench. I hopped out of its grip. 

I hobbled back and forth over the flower-patterned cushions, keeping my balance with the rock of the boat. Finally, the siren got onto the bench beside me and began to stalk after me.

It was significantly taller than me, towering really, so I couldn’t see how I was supposed to cut off its head. There had to be another way. Sam had taught me about sirens at some point. They could read your mind, find your deepest desires, change form to match it. 

I stumbled backward to remain out of reach of the siren. I threw my arms out to balance and dared a glance over my shoulder. I didn’t have much more boat to retreat to.

It was a bronze dagger. I was sure of it. A bronze dagger to the heart, coated in something. I dropped my machete and pulled my dagger out of my boot. The siren switched from Isaac to my mother. She smiled and reached out to me. My heart lurched. 

“It’s okay, baby.”

I blocked her out, forcing myself to focus on the late-night readings. The greek myths, the stories, and the legends that Sam made me memorize.  _ Not much can hurt a siren.  _ I remembered Sam telling me.  _ But you can kill it with a bronze dagger to the heart...coated in its victim’s blood.  _

“Let’s go home, Holly.” But the look in her eyes wasn’t my mother’s. 

I had a stupid idea. 

I accepted the monster’s hand, and immediately, euphoria rushed through me. Her smile glowed against the background of carnage. My friends fought behind her, the deck coated in blood, but all I could see was her face, grinning down at me. 

It wasn’t my mother’s grin. 

It brought me such joy to look at her face once more, but it  _ wasn’t’ hers.  _ There was something wrong. She wasn’t my home. 

“I love you, pumpkin,” she said. I smiled. This siren loved me, and I loved her. 

“I love you, too,” I confessed. 

“I need you to do something for me before we can go home,” she offered. 

I nodded. I smiled. The siren beamed, and I giggled under her pride. 

“Anything,” I blurted. 

She leaned down to whisper into my ear. 

“Finish them off.”

I peered at my friends. 

“But-” I protested. 

“Don’t you love me?”

Her eyes were pleading, and I raced to comfort her, afraid that I’d been the one to cause her any pain. She didn’t deserve anything but happiness. 

“Of course. I love you more than anything. I love the way you smile and the way your skin glows. I love your hair and how it bounces,” I rambled. 

She smiled, which made my heart skip a few beats, chasing after the joy it gave me. 

“Then why won’t you prove it?” she asked. 

I furrowed my brow as I struggled with a response. 

“They’re my friends.”

“And they’re killing my family.  _ Our family _ .”

I considered helping her out, saving her family, but I thought it was best not to get involved in family affairs when what I had with her was so pure. I didn’t want it tainted by blood.

“I love you. So much. But I won’t kill for you-”

“Do it, Holly!” she screamed all of a sudden.

I could see in her eyes a fire that I knew I’d put there. I wanted to fix it. I wanted to prove to her I loved her, but I could see she was suffering. 

If she wanted me to kill the ones I loved, she couldn’t love me. Her eyebrows pulled together in a grimace of pain, and I thought there was only one way to make her pain disappear. 

“No,” I insisted. 

I dragged the dagger across my palm, and in the same movement, I drove it into my mother’s chest. The siren’s venom still pulsed through my system, making me feel a love for her I’d never known, when I watched her gag on her own blood, watched it spill out of her gaping mouth. 

“I’m sorry,” I blubbered. “I’m so sorry.”

The fire in her eyes blinked away, and her face softened until it was almost peaceful. She faded into a monster at my feet, but the pain of killing her remained. 

The sounds of metal crashing against metal reminded me that the work wasn’t done. I hopped down from the padded bench and saw Creaser standing on the edge of the boat. A siren whispering in his ear. He closed his eyes and leaned his head back into the wind. 

I wasn’t fast enough to stop him before he dropped himself off the bow of the ship. I grabbed Creaser’s machete and drove it through the monster’s neck. 

I looked overboard to see if he’d come up for air, but I barely got a glance before Bradshaw landed beside me. Annabeth was on him in a moment, going in for the kill. Bradshaw rolled away before she could land the blow. 

As they continued slicing at each other, I searched for the siren that looked like Percy. He was leaning against the back wall to the steering room, popping soggy fries into his mouth as he watched the show. 

This Percy looked a bit different than the Percy I had come to know from my dreams. His hair was shorter, cleaner. He was fully clothed in a sweater and jeans, and although he was well built, he didn’t give off the same deadly aura as the Percy from my dreams did.

I scooted around the side of the boat, so I could catch him by surprise. Once I was close enough, hiding in his blind spot, I lunged. 

He caught the machete easily, unsurprised by my attack. 

“Miss Holly Fitz. Nice to meet you,” he crooned. His eyes were different as well. They were the color of soft waves lapping against the shore, not the hurricane that had started so near here. 

“Can’t say the feeling is mutual,” I stalled. 

He reached to touch my arm. I dodged. For every step he took forward, I took one backward, trying to change directions, so I wouldn’t be backed into another corner. 

Annabeth spotted me in one of my attempts to slash at his gut, and she whirled on me. 

“Don’t you  _ dare  _ touch him,” she ordered. I froze under the point of her blade, ducked, dodged, backed up. I was now avoiding two skilled fighters out for my blood. What a treat. 

“Wise girl,” Percy cooed. “Bradshaw’s getting up.”

She looked at Bradshaw as he hobbled to his feet like he was the scum of the earth. She charged him all over again. 

“Good. Now that we’re alone,” the siren began. “How about we have a little chat.”

I held my two blades out in front of me. My machete in the right, dagger in the left. Percy inched forward before speaking again. 

“I saw you kill my sister after she had you,” he said. “I wanna know how.” 

Bradshaw screamed. I turned to see Annabeth standing over him as he knelt on the floor. Blood seeped out of between where his fingers were pressed to his shoulder and stained his button-down shirt. She raised her sword. 

“Annaebth, no!” I hollered. 

I was too late. Annabeth took off Bradshaw’s head with a single blow before turning to me. I flicked my head to the siren, and when I saw that he too had become distracted by the affair, I jumped on him. 

Forgetting to not let them touch me, I hurled all of my weight onto the creature, sending us both toppling to the floor. I grappled with the monster on the ground. I felt the euphoria start to rise in me again. There wasn’t much time. 

I flipped the siren onto its back and pinned it underneath my knees. The venom started to seep through my system, making me deliriously happy. I knew I’d do anything for this monster, but I forced myself to drive the machete down on his neck, my hands on both sides, blood spraying everywhere, before he could take over. 

He turned into a monster once again. 

The sounds of fighting stopped. The air became still again. Peaceful really, but I didn’t dare think it. 

I flopped onto the ground beside his dead body, panting, still kind of crying, and letting my eyes shut for a moment. 

“No. No, no, no. N-n-n-n-n-n-n-no, Bradshaw!” I heard Annabeth cry. She continued to mutter incoherently, and I stared at the sky which had become stained with vibrant reds and oranges as the sun began to set behind me. 

The water slapped against the bottom of the boat. I heard the pounding of footsteps approach the back of the boat. 

“Holly? Where’s Creaser?” I looked up at Claire whose face was twisted in worry. 

I remembered. 

“Shit.” I flew to my feet. “A siren made him jump overboard.”

I began to search the surface of the water. 

“Creaser!” I called. 

“Creaser!” Claire repeated. 

We continued to holler his name until the others joined us, all but Annabeth. 

“What’s the matter?” Rowena wondered. 

Claire explained while I kept screaming his name despite the stinging in my throat. Frank dove into the water as a dolphin, and I waited for him to resurface. I tapped my fingers on the railing. 

“I couldn’t get to him in time,” I said for the sake of making noise. “He just let himself go. There’s no way he could survive underwater that long. There’s no way. I-”

“Holly,” Claire spoke. “You’re spiraling.”

I went back to staring at the surface of the water wordlessly, but that didn’t stop the thoughts from racing out of control in my mind.  _ If I had been faster, he would still be alive. Bradshaw would still be alive.  _

Frank broke through the water in human form, Creaser’s body hanging limply in his arms. His face was pale, and his fingertips were stained purple from the cold. We worked together to pull them both onto the boat. 

“Who knows CPR?” Tamara demanded.

It was met with shifting glances as people waited for someone to speak up. Frank heaved a deep sigh. 

“Annabeth does.”

We looked over to where she sat, staring blankly at the pools of Bradshaw’s blood. She was covered in it. Frank ran over without another moment’s thought. 

“Annabeth,” he said. “We need you.”

“I killed him, Frank,” she lulled. 

“Yes, you did, and now it’s time to save Creaser, got it?” 

He held her face in his hands and forced her attention to land on him. She nodded and followed Frank back to where Creaser was lying lifelessly on the floor. She knelt at his side, checked his pulse, his breathing. 

Then she started to count compressions. She pulsed the heel of her hand into his chest with her fingers flexed. She muttered the numbers until she reached thirty and gave him two long breaths. 

This went on for a long time. Annabeth’s shoulders were shaking from the exertion, her pushes becoming less deliberate. She gave him another two breaths, and I could see her hands shaking through the motions. 

She checked his pulse. Shook her head. Continued pressing, but Creaser’s eyes were still far away from here. 

“Annabeth,” I started. 

“I’ve got it,” she shot back.

“Annabeth, he was down there too long, there’s nothing we can do.”

I knelt down on the other side of Creaser’s body, so I could meet her eyes. To my surprise, they were glistening with a thin coat of tears. Her hair was plastered to her forehead from sweat and dried blood. The same had turned her brightly colored beach outfit dark shades of crimson. 

“Annabeth,” I said with more force. I reached out to stop her hands from pressing into his ribs. “He’s dead.”

I felt her hands quiver beneath my touch, but she stopped. She sat back on her heels and steeled her jaw. 

“I’m bringing us to shore. Frank, you’ll take Claire, Gordon, Asa, and Rowena to collect wood. As much as you can. Holly, Tamara, and Harvey will help me get the bodies off the ship,” she said as she stood to walk to the steering room. 

“Yes, ma’am,” Harvey muttered. 

He was the only one who responded. 

Annabeth drove us to a small inlet that led into the woods, and we began to get to work. I had to pile off the dead sirens and dump them into the lake. For most of them, the head was a separate piece to be discarded, but the one I had stabbed still very clearly had its head. That was the kind of thing that was hard to hide. 

“Who killed this one?” Harvey mumbled while we were hauling it to the side of the ship. 

“I did,” I confessed as we hurled the carcass overboard. It hit the water with a splash and gurgled on its way to the bottom. 

“And what...you just stabbed it?”

“I remembered Sam telling me you could kill a siren with a bronze dagger to the heart, and well, I just happened to have one handy.”

Tamara overheard while she dropped a head into the water. 

“The blade’s gotta be dipped in the blood of a victim, though,” she clarified. 

“Yeah, that’s why I touched it,” I dismissed, wandering back to find another body to haul. As you do. 

“So you were under its spell, but you still killed it?” Harvey asked. 

I had a feeling he was going to ask for an explanation of how I did it, and I wasn’t ready to tell him that there were certain things I wouldn’t do in the name of loyalty. That wasn’t a nice thing to share when his life depended on me doing  _ anything _ in the name of loyalty. 

“I seem to remember that you didn’t even get infected by the siren’s touch, wanna talk about that?” I deflected. He clamped his mouth shut and didn’t speak for the remainder of the time it took for us to clear the deck. 

We filed onshore. The others had gathered logs and brambles to create two tall pyres where Creaser and Bradshaw were lain, wrapped in spare towels. Asa fished a beaten up flask out of his jacket and lifted in the air. 

“To going down swinging,” he said. 

“To going down swinging,” the rest of us murmured, but the words blurred together as we stared at the piles of wood. 

Asa took a swig from his flask and nodded to Rowena. She stepped forward out of the shadows of the trees. Her makeup had magically repaired itself along with any bruises and cuts she must’ve gotten from the fight. 

“ _ Incendio, _ ” she chanted, and the pyres burst into flame. 

We waited for the fire to burn out completely, leaving two large piles of ash on the forest floor, before we boarded the boat once again and changed into fresh clothes once again. I ended up splayed out over a pile of towels that were covering the bloodstain we couldn’t get out, using a life vest as a pillow. Claire found an extra stash of blankets in the cabin, but we didn’t end up needing them as the temperature didn’t drop all night. 

Somehow, I was the first one to wake up. The sky was still dark, and Annabeth was steering the boat to land. Surrounding us on all sides was the carnage of a hurricane. The mountains in the distance stood tall and proud over a sea of fallen trees and torn earth. At some point, Annabeth had steered us down a narrow river full of algae and buzzing with flies. 

The ship jammed into the riverbank, and Annabeth emerged from the steering room. She spotted me sitting up and nodded before she started telling me what to do. 

“Wake them up, see if anyone has a spare flashlight.”

She threw a rope down to land and jumped after it. I began to shake those around me from their slumbers. One by one, they glared at me and groaned at the time. It was the middle of the night, or so I was told.

We pulled together three flashlights of varying sizes and brightness, and Annabeth split us into groups based off of who had one. It felt an awful lot like the buddy system, but I figured my company was just too proud to admit it.

Annabeth led the way with Gordon and Tamara. I followed behind them under the light of Frank’s flashlight. Rowena, Claire, and Harvey shuffled after us. The only proof I had that they were still there was the rustling of leaves. 

I kept my eyes trained on the circle of light that Frank’s flashlight provided, so I wouldn’t trip over the various trunks and branches that blocked our path. 

“So,” Frank murmured. “You’re mortal?”

I almost laughed at his grasps for conversation, glad that I wasn’t the only one who couldn’t stand the long stretches of silence. 

“Yeah, didn’t stop a prophecy from finding me though,” I answered. 

“I know how that feels.”

“Right, Annabeth said something about a prophecy of seven,” I remembered. I tried not to remember the unique lilt that Bradshaw used in his speech, but the feeling gripped my gut anyway. 

“And you think I’m one of them?”

“I mean, I was just guessing.”

“You were right.”

I paused, trying to think of something to say. 

“What happened?” I said on accident. I hadn’t meant to pry. I knew it was a mistake when Frank took awhile to respond, trudging along through the thickets. Then he sighed. 

“What always happens. Something got a taste of power and wanted to destroy the world so it could have more. A lot of good people died. A lot of friends, you know? And it was supposed to be worth it. It was supposed to give us peace.” 

“But here we are again,” I finished. 

“Here we are again,” he sighed. I felt the need to change the subject before he went silent for however long we were meant to be walking.

“How does a son of Mars equal shapeshifting?” I blurted. 

He chuckled.

“Well, it doesn’t really, but being a legacy of Poseidon does.”

“Poseidon?” I parroted. “Like Percy?”

“Yeah, he’s technically my great great great great great uncle. With like a hundred more greats.”

I thought about what it would be like to know someone with that many greats attached to their name. I wondered what it would feel like to have it still mean nothing because it was godly parentage, not human.

“That’s weird,” I said in place of any of my other thoughts. 

“All it means is that I can call all of this.” I saw him gesture to our surroundings through the dark. “Family drama.”

I laughed, and he asked me about my family. I told him all the things I could remember about my parents and how they’d been removed from the picture. He told me about his mother, his grandmother, his father that never was. 

The trail beneath us turned to gravel and widened until we could see the stars again. I couldn’t help myself from teaching Frank the few constellations I could recognize while they were upside down from my usual Manhattan view. He listened intently. 

We didn’t take any breaks as we followed Annabeth through the forest of fallen trees and over steeper and steeper hills. We didn’t ask any questions, and after hours of walking the light of morning came to bathe us in warmth.

The light illuminated a road that led into a parking lot where a battered motel rested in the shadow of a tall mountain range. Annabeth led us inside and rang the bell at the front desk. 

A young woman with her hair tied carelessly into a bun and large round glasses rushed out from a back room. 

“Dzień dobry, co mogę dla ciebie zrobić?” she chatted. 

I glanced around at my company and saw that they too had just remembered we were in a foreign country. I heard Rowena sigh deeply behind me. 

“Bloody Americans,” she grumbled and stepped forward to address the receptionist. “Dzień dobry, chcielibyśmy kilka pokoi.”

The woman nodded and asked a few more questions. Rowena politely replied to each with a smile. We paid with a stolen credit card that Asa had in his wallet, and the woman gave us the keys to our rooms. The rooms were next door to each other, and without much debate, we split up boys and girls. 

“Dibs on a bed,” Claire said once we walked in the room. She flopped down at the foot of one of the two full-sized beds, and the covers rustled underneath her. 

“Don’t get too comfortable,” Annabeth warned. “We’re leaving in a couple of hours.”

“Then why did we even book a room?” Claire criticized.

“Because if and when we make it back here in one piece, we’re going to want to be able to slip in unnoticed. That’s why I had Rowena book it for the week.”

She began going through the contents of her bag, spilling them out onto the covers of the bed that Claire wasn’t splayed out on. She threw away the maps and protein bars that had been destroyed from the water and rewrapped most of her other supplies in plastic bags. 

“I highly recommend you guys use these couple of hours to get some food, sharpen your blades, freshen up. It’s going to be a long haul up that mountain,” Annabeth told us. 

I pushed aside the curtain from the weather-stained window and gazed up at the mountain ridge in the distance. If I didn’t think too hard about it, the silhouette of the peaks resembled a person sleeping, peaceful and quiet.


	10. My Wildest Dreams Come True

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> they go and get percy

Tamara and I used the time we had to pick through the gift shop. We found a couple of sweaters with the outline of the mountain ridge and a rack of socks with jokes on them. It was wonderful to be able to put on clean socks, not to mention the fresh smell of the hoodie.

“Look,” I said to grab Tamara’s attention. “Snow globes.”

I shook one so the chunks of white plastic floated around the miniature mountains. 

“They have shot glasses too,” Tamara added. 

I looked at the shelf of mugs and figurines. Each souvenir reminded me that this was a tourist destination, that people came here to enjoy themselves. Thinking of the groups that would trudge to the mountain peak with disposable cameras and clean socks, I couldn’t help but add the snow globe to my pile of things. 

We put our purchases on Asa’s credit card and went through the entire exchange using gestures and small words like the worst game of charades. 

I changed into the clean clothes the moment we got into our room. I sat down in a chair with a sigh and began to munch on a bag of chips from a pile on the desk. 

I only got halfway through the bag when a sharp ache shot through my head. I yelped and pressed my hand to my temple, which caught the attention of the rest of the room. It began to subside, only to come back with more force. 

“Holly?” someone asked. 

I saw the darkness of a cave. I tried to focus on the room around me, but the darkness won. The first thing I saw were a pair of green eyes staring into my soul. 

Percy hung from his chains in front of me. He was paler, sickly, skinny, and malnourished. The skin on his face clung like wet paper to his bones. 

“Can you hear me?” he croaked.

It took me an embarrassing amount of time to realize he was talking to me. 

“I can hear you,” I muttered, my voice coming out watery and distant.

“I’m on the north side of the mountain, in a cave,” he stuttered. The blood vessels around his eye quivered under the effort. “They’re going to kill me soon. You have to hurry.”

His words trailed off into the distance as the darkness of the cave blinked away into the red of my eyelids. I sat up with a gasp of air to find myself laid out on the bed surrounded by my roommates. 

“What happened?” I blurted. 

Annabeth began to explain, “You passed out. Is everything okay?”

I nodded, but then changed my mind on my response. 

“No,” I decided. “Percy’s running out of time.”

Annabeth looked at me with wide grey eyes.

“He contacted you?”

“Yeah, he looked like he was in a lot of pain.”

“Did he say anything?” Annabeth asked. 

“He said he was on the north side of a mountain-”

The earth trembled beneath us, cutting me off. 

“They must know we’re here,” Annabeth mumbled. “They’re going to kill him before we can get to him. We have to leave now.”

We scrambled to grab as much as we could carry, stashing weapons in the crevices of our boots and in any pockets we could. Annabeth packed her bag and rushed to inform the boys of our early departure. 

On the way out, we passed the front desk, who stopped us before we could leave. She had a quick conversation with Rowena that ended with the witch casting a spell that knocked her out. 

“She was just letting us know we couldn’t climb the mountain because the trails are closed due to some freak hurricane. I figured if she’s asleep, she can have deniability,” she explained. 

Annabeth nodded, and we followed her through the flattened forest. She kept a map in her hand and checked her compass at every turn while Rowena grumbled about the rough terrain. We skirted the edge of the mountain and climbed a small hill that fell into a large valley on the north side of the mountain. 

We didn’t pause to take in the view, but continued hiking down into the valley. We were walking through an open field, a vulture tearing something apart in the distance, when the ground shook again. 

“Let’s get out of here. It’s too open,” Gordon suggested. We started to take large strides toward the shelter of some boulders, but we’d already been jinxed. 

Three demons with red eyes and dark coats blocked our path. We turned to go the other way, but more appeared in every direction. I drew my dagger and joined the circle of defense that had formed rather quickly. 

“Now would be a great time for a plan Annabeth,” Harvey directed. 

“Thanks. That helps a lot.”

The demons began to close in with wicked smirks, taking their sweet time. 

“Somebody do  _ something  _ before we’re all butchered,” I pleaded. 

“Well, I guess if you want something done right,” I heard the Scottish drawl of Rowena from somewhere behind me. “You’ve gotta do it yourself.  _ Abi! _ ” she shouted. 

The circle of demons flew back and landed on their backs. It was just enough of a distraction for Gordon and Tamara to begin chanting and exorcism. 

A demon lunged at me, and I slashed at its arm with my blade. The celestial bronze made orange sparks on contact with his skin. I slashed again. Behind me, Tamara and Gordon had stopped chanting. 

I heard the yell of a demon falling. 

Claire picked up the chant shortly after, but only got a couple phrases in before she was cut off. 

The demon in front of me pulled out a gun and aimed it at my head. I froze. 

Asa recited the next line of the exorcism, making the demon’s face contort in pain, and he was distracted, for just a moment. I lunged at the nozzle of his gun, grabbed it with one hand, slammed my palm over his grip with the other. The gun fell out of his hand, and a sound somewhere between a gasp and a chuckle escaped my throat. 

The demon looked at me like I was crazed. 

“Sorry, that’s just the first time I’ve ever gotten that right,” I said with a shrug. 

The demon growled. 

“Well,” he said. “I don’t need a gun to rip your head off.”

He threw a punch, and I ducked under it, only for him to kick me in the stomach. Hard. I coughed up something warm and thick, but I was hoping it was just vomit. I stumbled back, wishing I knew the next lines of the exorcism since I hadn’t heard anyone mumble a phrase for a while. A large bird swooped down from the sky, launching itself at a demon. I assumed it was Frank since a shape shifting demigod made more sense than a vigilante bird.

I cut the demon’s cheek when he got too close. He returned the favor by grabbing my throat with his beefy fingers. He lifted me in the air until my feet were dangling above the ground. I scratched at his grip.

“ _ Facias libertate servire _ ,” I heard glare growl from where she had a demon pinned under her knife. She could’ve killed it like this, except her knife was only metal. 

The demon flipped her off and pinned her to the ground. She let loose a barrage of punches that sounded through the field. 

I felt the blood start to pool in my cheeks. 

“ _ Te, _ ” Claire shouted as she tried to dodge some of the punches. “ _ Rogamus. _ ”

The word escaped her battered lips, and I recognized it. There was one more line. If I could just open my throat enough to get it out. I swung my legs at the demon, gasping, pulling at his fingers, but Claire’s recitation hadn’t weakened enough. 

I pulled in all the air I could, and against every instinct I had, I pushed it out. 

“ _ Audi Nos. _ ”

My vision darkened as the demon's hand remained wrapped around my throat. The sounds of smoke being dragged out of a human vessel filled the empty space between me and the rest of the world. 

I fell to the ground at last.

On my knees, I gasped for air. I could feel it fill my lungs after so long being deprived. I didn’t dare stand as my mind was swimming from deprivation, so I stayed there, breathing, grasping my throat where bruises were already beginning to form. 

Finally, my eyes came into focus again without too much effort, and I saw Tamara’s hand held out in front of me. I took it and she lifted me to my feet. 

“Nice work,” she said. 

I ignored the compliment and looked around at the empty vessels that littered the ground. 

“Are any of them alive?” I asked. 

“It doesn’t seem like it. They haven’t moved or anything.” She followed my gaze. Asa was checking pulses when he looked up in astonishment. 

“I should’ve made you put your money where your mouth is. This one’s still breathing,” he declared. 

He began to tap the girl’s shoulder to shake her awake. He called out to her while the rest of us watched in anticipation. At last, she fluttered her eyes and coughed up a little blood. 

“Where am I?”

“It doesn’t matter right now,” Asa assured her. “You’re safe, and we’re going to get you to a hospital.”

She hummed in agreement, and Asa went to pick her up. She screamed at the force it took for her to be lifted. I winced. 

“What are you saying? We can’t take her to a hospital,” Gordon complained. 

“She’s still alive, Gordon. Am I wrong, or are we in the business of saving people?”

Gordon became increasingly agitated, using larger gestures and punctuating his words by pushing them out with more force than was necessary. 

“The demons that attacked us aren’t dead, you know. They’ll tell him we’ve been here. We won’t get a second chance to see this through,” he scolded. 

Asa hesitated and looked down at the girl who’d passed out in arms. 

“Then go on without me,” he resolved. 

“What?”

“You’re right. We shouldn’t sacrifice the mission, and I can handle it on my own.”

Claire chose that moment to pipe in, “We’re not letting you wander through these woods alone with a comatose.” 

She crossed her arms and waited for him to come up with a new plan. 

“Yes, we are,” Annabeth stated.

Claire flicked her head around to face her and began to protest. 

“Annabeth-”

“It’s the only way to save the girl and finish what we started,” Annabeth spoke over her objections. 

“Then I’m going too,” Claire argued. 

“No, we need all the backup we can get up on that mountain. Asa can take care of himself.”

Claire frowned at her and scoffed, but she didn’t offer any further remarks. 

“Go now, Asa. She doesn’t have much time left,” said Annabeth. 

Asa nodded and grinned at our ever-shrinking group.

“See you on the flip side.”

“See you,” we said back with a few shy waves as he meandered up the way we came. 

We continued through the valley, searching for any signs of a cave. On top of the tallest peak, a burned cross came into view. The sight gave me chills. 

We followed the sounds of demon chatter, ducking and hiding from their lines of view. When it didn’t work, Annabeth took out one or two with her sword to clear a path. We rounded a stack of boulders, and Annabeth pushed us back slamming her back against the back of the rocks. 

“What?” Harvey hissed. 

“We found their game room,” she said. 

I peered through a spot of light in through the rocks to see the edge of a fire. Surrounding it were seemingly normal looking people, but I knew better. They chatted and laughed around bottles of beer. I twisted my neck to see more, but the rocks got in the way, and I wasn’t feeling that brave at the moment. 

“Did you see anything?” I whispered to Annabeth instead. 

“No. I didn’t have a chance to look past the hoard of demons.”

I didn’t ask any further questions while she flicked her eyes over the landscape, formulating a plan. I heard a muffled scream behind me and turned to see that a demon had gotten a hold of Claire with a hand over her mouth and a knife on her throat. 

Annabeth drew her sword. 

“Let her go,” she demanded. 

The demon laughed. Her lips were painted a deep shade of red that complimented the blue of her eyes. I had a running theory that demons chose beautiful vessels on purpose. Who wouldn’t?

“Hey, boss!” the demon called. “Look who I found.”

A team of demons came from the other side of our boulder hideout, following a man who looked wiry and old. His wrinkles were the only thing that gave his face definition, but even those were few and far between. I added him to the anomaly section of my data set.  _ Most  _ demons chose beautiful vessels. 

“Nicely done, Malory. You’ve earned yourself lunch,” the demon crooned, his words curling and twisting through the air as if they too were disgusted by the evil of their creator.

“Let her go, or I swear I’ll make you feel pain like you’ve never felt before,” Annabeth threatened. 

The demon grinned, exposing a row of chipped teeth. His eyes flashed egg yolk yellow. 

“Seize them,” he commanded, and the demon nearest to me twisted my arm behind my back. 

At their boss’s orders, they dragged us into the light of the campfire. They threw us down on the dirt in front of a dozen more demons. Even Annabeth wasn’t cocky enough to fight when they disarmed her, looting through her bag of supplies. 

The demon boss strolled over to a large picnic table and poured himself a glass of something expensive. He sipped at the liquid then set the half-full glass back down on the table. 

“Tell me,” he addressed us at last. “To what do I owe the  _ pleasure  _ of your visit?” We remained silent. “Have you come to plead for mercy? I know Dean wants your head on a plate.” He pointed a bony finger at Rowena. 

“Oh, I’m sorry, Alastair, dear, but after a few millennia, I’ve got a bad back, and, well, I simply can not stoop low enough to kiss your boot,” Rowena bit back. 

“You shouldn’t have said that.” He grabbed her chin in one of his hands, and with a swift flick of his wrist, he snapped the witch’s neck. 

I whimpered when her body hit the ground, dirtying her clothes that she always kept magically clean. The hoard of demons chortled at the entertainment. My stomach twisted into a firm knot. 

“Perhaps you think your hero is here.” Annabeth clenched her fists. 

In a panic, I grappled for ideas. I looked to Frank who shook his head. He wouldn’t be able to get them all, not fast enough. Alastair continued to taunt us, one by one, but I blocked him out. All we needed was a moment. I had seen with my own eyes what my teammates could do with a moment, a second, a breath. 

Like a message sent from heaven, I saw an owl perched on a fallen branch that dangled off the cliff’s edge. It was preening its feathers from what I could see, but it was hard to know for sure from this far away.

I looked to Annabeth, but she was distracted with the demons eyeing her, so I did something stupid. 

I rolled my eyes to the back of my head and let my body fall limp to the ground. Since the ground was basically just gravel, I had to work hard not to wince at the pain it gave my joints to land, but I had a moment. 

I grabbed a rock slowly in my hand while a demon rushed to lift me to my feet. They argued on whether I was really unconscious, and I used whatever leverage I had to hurl the rock at the cliff. 

The demons followed the rock's trajectory as it crashed into the boulders ahead. The sound startled a few smaller birds and a rabbit that scurried away, but all I cared about was the owl that opened its large wings and soared overhead. 

“Oops,” I faked. “I missed.”

“Who are you?” Alastair questioned. 

“I’m Holly. Please don’t kill me.” I tried my hardest to keep up the dumb girl charade that could explain my random need to throw a rock. 

“Oh, Holly. I don’t really enjoy killing people,” he gurgled. “I like causing them pain.”

He got uncomfortably close and ran the back of his hand over the side of my face. 

“That’s nice,” I stuttered. 

He sneered with his face so close to mine I could taste his breath, but I didn’t dare move. It was a loud screech that saved me. It came from over Alastair’s shoulder, and he turned to see what had made the noise. 

A pair of talons pierced his eyes. 

He wasn’t the only one. Dozens of owls attached themselves to whatever body part of a demon they could get to, biting and tearing at their human flesh. 

I looked to Annabeth who was in the center of it all. She met my eyes and grinned. Gordon and Claire made for the box with our weapons. Claire tossed me my dagger, and we began to slice what demons we could get our hands on, working our way toward the cliff of boulders for shelter. 

Tamara was stuck with a machete, hacking the vessels to pieces, but not doing any real harm to the demons inside. It was a horrid sight when a headless body hobbled toward me and I had to watch the demon’s skull flash through the empty space above its shoulders when I drove my dagger into its heart. 

Alastair quickly figured out it was Annabeth who controlled the owls and focused his attention on her. She ran her sword through his stomach, but the yellow eyed demon only grunted and yanked it out. 

She fought him off with all her skill, but there was another demon to her right who threw her off balance. Frank barreled through as an elephant, squashing demons beneath his feet, but more just kept coming. 

The ground quaked, and for a second the fighting stopped as everyone tried to keep their balance. This pulse was bigger than the earlier ones, it lasted longer. The boulders behind us began to shake loose from their holds, rumbling down the side of the cliff. 

I had to sprint to avoid being crushed by a rock headed my way. Three more crashed down into the valley, threatening to flatten Harvey. I grabbed his arm and yanked him to safety. We landed a few feet away, and more rocks came for us as the earth continued to shake. 

We began to run, slicing at the demons that attacked us from all angles despite the avalanche happening behind us. 

A hand shot out from behind a bend in the cliff and pulled me to safety. Annabeth stood pressed against the damp stone, breathing heavily, a horrible circle of blood seeping down the sleeve of her sweater. 

“Look.” She jerked her head toward the top of the cliff where the avalanche had begun. The mouth of a cave had been exposed from the clearing of rocks. 

Even though I’d never seen the outside of the cave in my dreams, I knew this was the one where they were keeping Percy. It had to be. 

The earth had finally stopped shaking, but rocks were still falling into the valley. Tamara and Gordon stood back to back, fending off demons with bloody machetes. Claire had blood running down her forehead, but all her limbs were intact. Harvey was now riding on the back of Frank the elephant, cutting down demons that he couldn’t smash. 

“Now or never,” said Annabeth as she shoved a single plastic water bottle into the front pocket of her hoodie.

She tore a piece of fabric from her beach shorts and cinched it around her arm where the blood was coming from. She grimaced and twirled her sword in her hand. 

“I’ve got your back,” I chanted as confirmation. 

She grinned, and without further ado, we sprinted up the mountain side. 

The boulders beneath our feet were unsteady as we hopped from surface to surface. More than once, Annabeth had to save me from falling into a crevice, but she never faltered. A group of demons spotted us dashing to the cave and tried to follow us up. 

In response, Annabeth pulled me to the surface of a boulder with a few sharp angles, jammed her sword under a large boulder that was hanging in its place precariously and heaved. 

The rock cascaded down the cliff side, taking out most of the demons, but two jumped out of the way before the rock could annihilate them. Annabeth pushed me along to keep climbing. 

As the cliff became steeper, I had to use more and more of my hands, until I was crawling to keep from falling through the air. Annabeth waited for me on a ledge. In front of us stood a wall of sheer granite. There were no more boulders to keep us safe since none had the purchase to hold on. 

I felt the air around me become thinner, and I gasped to suck it in.

“Holly,” Annabeth soothed. 

I looked behind me, and my eyes bugged out at the drop. Had I climbed that? Seriously? The two living demons scurried up the rocks below us, more followed farther down, but I could only see the tops of their heads, hair whipping in the wind. 

Frank was a grey speck in the valley.

I pressed myself against the side of the cliff and tried to slow my heart rate.

“Holly, you can not panic right now. Do you understand?”

I knew she was right, but my fingertips were buzzing, and the edge was so close. 

“Close your eyes,” she ordered. 

I shook my head violently and stared at the demons that were making their way up. 

“Holly, do you trust me?”

I chewed my lip. Were my hands shaking or was that the wind?

“I need you to answer me.”

I nodded slowly and deliberately.

“Then close your eyes.” I squeezed them shut. “Now turn around.” I followed the guide of her hands on my shoulders until I could smell the salt of the rocks in front of me. “Open.”

I snapped my eyes open, and I could no longer see the drop, but the wall in front of me. I placed my hands on it, and it was solid and cold. 

“Climb the wall, Holly. Just like camp.”

“Just like camp,” I repeated, so I would believe it. At least now I could breathe easier, but my hands still shook as I grabbed the first divot in the rocks I saw. 

I followed Annabeth’s lead. Her hair was falling out of its ponytail and waved aggressively in the wind. I could feel the short curls near the front of my head tickling my ears, the rest tied back in a braid. 

I lifted myself up to each foothold that Annabeth left behind. 

She checked over her shoulder every so often to make sure I was still there, but didn’t slow down for anything. I should’ve been annoyed, but I appreciated that it forced me to keep up. 

I wasn’t sure how far we had left, but my arms ached from holding my body weight to the cliff. Annabeth’s feet trembled with exertion. I dared a glance below us. 

What I found was worse than the drop, but the demons had reached the cliff. Standing where Annabeth and I had stood before, they smoked out of their vessels, and began to rise up the cliff. 

“Annabeth,” I warned her. She looked down and cursed under her breath. 

She climbed faster, but the foot holds were growing sparse and the surface unreliable. The smoke billowed toward us, and she moved her eyes around the wall. She found a space where the rock was crumbling and began to scrape at it with her fingers. 

The smoke reached my feet, and I scrambled up higher. 

“Annabeth!” I cried. 

I heard a crack and a grunt before Annabeth reached her arm out to me. 

“Grab on!” she hollered. I tried to reach for her to no avail. 

“I’m too far!”

“So jump!”

I was going to call her an idiot, but then the demon smoke was wrapping around my legs and tugging. I ripped my ankle from its grip, bent at the knees, and launched myself toward Annabeth. 

I felt the ground disappear, the air between me and the mountain. I snapped my eyes shut and kept my hand outstretched. 

I said a prayer to whatever god was listening. 

My shoulder strained under the sudden weight of my body. My wrist ached in Annabeth’s firm grip. Around us, the smoke swirled. It shoved us from side to side. Annabeth’s feet were ripped from the cliff, but she had her right hand already wrapped around her sword which was embedded deep into the cliff side. 

The demon smoke blew us around, trying to shake our grip, but Annabeth held tight to my hand, and I squeezed back with the same intensity. Soon, they got bored and swept away further up the cliff. I saw them disappear into the side of the mountain, entering what could only be the cave to inform every guard who was there. 

“Now what?” I croaked, still dangling in midair. 

I could see sweat forming on Annabeth’s forehead and dripping around her hairline.

“Find somewhere to hold,” she said, her voice raspy with the effort it took to keep both of us alive. 

I searched around my feet for any cut in the wall I could find. A small crack ran a little to my left, and I strained to reach it. I caught the tip of my toe in the hold and grasped the wall to hold myself steady. 

“Got it?” Annabeth gasped. 

“Not quite.”

I shimmied more of my body weight onto the cliff side, clinging to whatever I could find. You’d be surprised what your brain will tell you is possible when your life depends on it. 

“You can let go.” She released me immediately and let out a breath. My muscles tightened with the responsibility of holding myself up. 

Annabeth grabbed onto her sword once again and heaved herself up on it until she could find her own footholds. She panted with her face pressed against the cliff and her limbs splayed out in all directions before she braced herself to yank out her sword. 

A flurry of rocks poured out after it, and Annabeth’s foot slipped. She caught herself with a shaking hand and clicked her sword to her belt. It disappeared in front of my eyes, confirming the suspicions I’d had of its enchantment. 

We began to climb once again. 

Cold sweats covered the length of my spine, and my fingers had gone completely numb from the adrenaline rocketing through my system. With my heart pounding in my ears and my breaths tight against the cliff, I saw Annabeth throw her elbow over a ledge. 

She pulled herself up until she disappeared completely. I rushed up to where she had gone, and her hand appeared over the ledge. I accepted, and she lifted me into the cave. 

We stood up and dusted ourselves off. Turning to the darkness, we found a pair of demons with glowing knives.   
Annabeth’s sword was already in her hand when I fished my dagger out from its strap. We charged the enemy with our blades raised and didn’t stop until they were both lying dead on the floor. 

They weren’t the last ones. There were dozens, and they were ready for us. That didn’t stop Annabeth from beating them. Exhausted and injured, she was still a better fighter than the demons. Me, well, I survived. When I could, I sunk my dagger into a demon’s chest. I practiced what Sam had taught me in demon fights, always going for the kill. 

We happened down a corridor that had been abandoned as all the guards came to greet us at the entrance. Annabeth took the moment to pause, quieting her footsteps to not draw attention. 

“Recognize anything?” she asked. 

I looked around. The only light was the dim glow our magical blades emitted onto the walls of the cave. I shook my head. 

Down a hall to my right, I heard voices and slammed my back against the wall. Annabeth did the same, and we listened patiently. The voices grew louder, so Annabeth adjusted her grip on her sword. 

We saw the demons before they saw us, fortunately, and Annabeth took off both of their heads before they could scream for help. We turned down the way they came. 

We slunk around each corner, sprinting through open areas, hiding behind walls. The whole time my entire body was standing at attention. I was sure that if a pin dropped too close to me, the sound would alert me of danger, and I would cut it in half. 

Pressed against a wall, catching our breath, I heard a murmur I couldn’t quite place. Upon listening closer, I recognized it as humming, but I couldn’t place the tune. 

“Billy Joel? He’s such a Seaweed Brain,” she laughed a little too loudly. 

Around the corner, a group of demons spotted us and called out the message for more to follow. Annabeth sprinted toward the sounds of humming, and I ran to catch up. My feet landed with hard thuds against the dry stone. The sound echoed through the cave, alerting every demon that didn’t already know where we were. 

The humming grew louder, and Annabeth ran faster. 

Louder still, and the narrow hall opened up into a small room with a metal cart to one side and a prisoner chained to the wall. 

“Percy,” Annabeth cheered. 

A sword appeared at her throat.

“Ah, ah, ah, not so fast Chase,” taunted a young voice that I knew. The kid in front of me looked to be no older than fourteen years old, but when his eyes turned black as the emptiness of the cave, I knew it was a lie. “I’ve been expecting you.”

“I hope you didn’t go to any trouble,” Annabeth responded with fake politeness, her eyes glued to the son of Poseidon. He hummed the tune from before, and now that I was closer, I could distinguish the melody of  _ Piano Man _ . 

“No, don’t worry. I have to say, I thought you’d be more impressive considering what he says about you.” He motioned towards his prisoner. 

“Should I be worried?” she half-joked. 

“Nah, there just mumbles really. He talks in his sleep. You can learn a lot from a person who’s gone out of their mind.”

His eyes darted past my shoulder, and I glanced to see what he saw. The demons had arrived. Dozens of them. I shot Annabeth a heavy look, and she pressed her mouth into a thin line to show that she knew. 

“It’s bad, Chase,” he crooned. “He’s not even useful anymore, just completely, and utterly, mad.”

Annabeth grinned. Something terrifying flashed across her eyes, and I gripped the dagger in my hand tighter. 

“That’s the thing. Everyone says opposites attract, and for the most part it’s true, but you have to have one thing in common otherwise you have nothing to go off of,” she chatted. “I used to think there was nothing between me and that idiot, but I’m a quick learner.”

She lowered her sword to the ground with her other hand lifted in surrender. 

“See, I, too, am completely-” 

She took a step forward with both her hands raised. 

“And utterly-” 

She took another step, the sword digging into the skin on her throat. She looked the demon in the eye, barely a foot away from his face as she pressed ever closer, forcing his hand to pull back on the blade still pressed against her neck. 

“Mad,” she finished. 

It threw the demon off for only a moment, but that was all she needed. She feinted right, and before the demon could adjust she grabbed the flat of his sword in both her hands and wrenched it from his grip. 

The fighting broke out like a shattered glass in the silence as Annabeth killed the demon that had found Percy’s weak spot. Over the sounds of metal clanging against metal, Percy hummed the  _ Piano Man  _ on repeat.

Annabeth pushed through to where he was dangling from his chains. I did my best to keep the demons from spilling her guts on the floor. She brought her sword down swiftly onto the chains but they only flashed a series of red sigils before they disappeared again. 

“They’re enchanted,” Annabeth groaned as she fought off more of the demons. 

“So what do we do?” 

“I’m working on it.”

I ducked under a bloody blade and cut at a demon's ankles while I was crouched low. I jammed my dagger through a demon’s neck until it was buried to the hilt. The plan until Annabeth came up with something? Survive. 

“ _ Abi! _ ” 

The demons flew back, crashing into the wall and leaving a circle of empty space around Annabeth and I. We whirled around to see Rowena standing there with purple eyes and her hands outstretched. 

“You’re dead!” I cried. 

“No, it takes a lot more than a neck snap to kill me, dearie. Can I be of assistance?” she said. 

Annabeth got over her coming back from the dead a lot faster than I did and began to explain the enchanting of the chains binding Percy.

“Can you break it?” she asked. 

“Of course, I can. Just buy me time, I’ll handle the rest.”

The demons were already recovering from Rowena’s hit. They came at us all at once, and we cut through however many we could, keeping them from reaching Rowena. They called to kill the sea spawn, which only angered Annabeth and made her fight harder. 

I went to stab a demon in front of me, but the blade didn’t have the right effect. I pulled it out to try again, but the demon’s yellow eyes stopped me. 

With a flick of his wrist, Alastair threw me against the wall. The impact vibrated through my bones and made my head pound. I kept my eyes peeled open and felt around for my dagger on the cave floor. 

Annabeth dodged Alastair with everything she had, attacking him with her sword at every opportunity. I struggled to my feet and my vision swam with blue blotches. Rowena was chanting frantically in Latin, and Percy was now mumbling the lyrics he could remember. 

A demon with dark hair and a long scar running across her forehead ran to stop Rowena now that Annabeth was incapacitated. 

She didn’t get there in time. 

The chains around Percy’s wrists shattered into a thousand pieces, and he fell limply to the floor. Somehow, he looked even worse in person than he had in my dreams. He was so skinny I could count his ribs easily and his hip bone protruded above where his stomach began. His skin looked waxy, almost yellow, a shade I’d only ever seen on corpses. 

Still, his eyes fluttered open, and he sat up slowly. 

He lifted a steady hand and held it out at arm's length. The water that Annabeth had stowed in her hoodie, shot out of her pocket and into Percy’s open hand. Rowena took a deliberate step back as he chugged the container with a single gulp. 

He tried to stand but stumbled once he reached his feet. I instinctively rushed to catch him, ignoring the screaming of my muscles.

“Thanks,” he muttered, his voice as dry and worn as I remembered. 

“Percy!” Annabeth shouted. 

He lifted his head to find the source of the noise and found her trapped against the wall of the cave, Alastair pressing her own sword against her throat. The demons that were still alive stood back, waiting for their master to make a move. 

Percy straightened his jaw and lifted his chin. 

“Because I’m a nice guy, I’m gonna give you three seconds to let her go,” he offered with a face void of emotion. 

“You don’t scare me, Perseus. You won't do anything with her life at stake." 

"You've done your research," Percy chatted easily. "I respect that. Look, we don't have to do this. I'm perfectly happy walking away, pretending none of this never happened."

"If you think I'm going to let you walk free, you really have gone mad." Alastair leaned into the blade, and Annabeth pressed further into the wall to escape death. 

"Murder it is then." His voice went dark when he saw Annabeth struggling in her hold. 

He lifted a hand and curled his fingers like he was grabbing a rope. Alastair contorted in pain, the sword falling from his grasp. Percy squeezed, and the liquid in Alastair's vessel bubbled. He began to steam, black smoke trying to escape from every pore but never getting car before the blood pulled it back in. His bones bent, curdled, shifted. His blood ran like fingers to crush his skull with a soft crack. 

The former Prince of Hell melted into a puddle on the floor, and then even that boiled away into nothing. 

Percy released his hand and exhaled. He turned to the demons that stood silently, dumbfounded. 

“You can go now,” he said, and they smoked out of their vessels, leaving piles of used human bodies on the floor of the cave. 

He bent down to the ground and lifted Annabeth's sword. With a flourish, he offered the handle to her.

"You dropped this," he said with a lopsided grin. 

Annabeth snatched her sword from his outstretched hand. 

"So you think you can throw a line like that, and everything's good? That I won't be mad at you anymore?" she scolded, gesturing with her sword. 

"I mean…I was hoping-"

"Jackson, the only reason I haven't thrown you off this cliff is because you look like shit and I feel bad for you."

"Thanks?"

"Let's just go home," she sighed, leading us through the corridors. 

"That sounds like a great idea," Rowena chimed in. There were dark circles under eyes from the effort it took to break the spell work on Percy's chains. 

"And I totally agree, but we can't leave yet," Percy told us while he stepped over a body. Annabeth raised her eyebrows at him. 

"Why the hell not?" she challenged.

“I told the knights I’d set them free.” He shrugged. 

Annabeth rolled her eyes at him and turned down a familiar hall. 

“Are you going to elaborate, or?” she pressed him. 

“Well, there are these knights, and they were asleep for years and years because-”

“Skip ahead.”

“Right. Dean woke them up. I’m not sure how, but he controls them now. I promised I’d free them when they helped me contact the Flame.”

“You mean Holly,” Annabeth jumped in. 

The light from the outdoors began to bounce around the corner. 

“Holly?” he asked. 

“Yeah, she’s right behind you.”

Percy turned to look at me.

“Oh, hey. What’s crackalackin?” he jeered. 

Annabeth groaned, but I couldn’t help but chuckle and respond with the same tone.

“Oh, you know, end of the world, staggering weight on my shoulders, can’t complain.”

He nodded.

“Yeah, been there.”

Annabeth shook her head and walked faster toward the cliff’s edge. 

“I hate you both,” she grumbled. 

“Wise girl’s just upset because the end of the world means she’s gotta deal with a bunch of idiots.”

“I hate to interrupt this thing you have going,” Rowena said without a touch of remorse. “But perhaps we should find these knights before Dean’s entire army finds out we’re here.”

She gestured to the fight that was still going on down in the valley. We could just make out the movements of our friends and the glow of a fire gone rogue.

“They tell you where they were?” Annabeth redirected. 

Percy scratched the back of his neck sheepishly. 

“It didn’t come up.”

“Wonderful.” She gazed off the edge of the cliff. “Can you get us off this mountain?”

“Sure thing.”

He put two fingers in his mouth and whistled sharply into the air. The sound rang out for a long while, and he stared patiently into the distance. 

Before long, a flock of birds appeared in the sky. They came closer, and I saw that these birds had legs, four of them. Closer still, and I could see the body of a horse. Seven winged-horses clattered onto the mountain tops. Percy smiled with his entire face and rushed to hug a dark pegasus who nickered at him. 

We rode the pegasi down the mountain, picking up our friends at the bottom who were beaten and tired from fighting for their lives. When we landed outside the motel, I nearly ran into our room and collapsed onto the mattress. 


	11. My Shoes Get Wet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> down the river.....that's it

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter is kind of all over the place, it's basically just snapshots of character development so everyone can understand Percy a little bit better.   
> at least the way I'm writing him  
> my computer is also broken, so I did this on my phone, my mom's computer, my sister's computer, and in notebooks before I could bring it all together, so it might come off a little like a random patchwork, but that's because it is   
> it could be worse though

I stared at the ceiling while the rest of the party shuffled into the room. All but Frank who had gone to get food. This room was not meant to accommodate that many people, but we did it anyway. 

I refused to move from the bed as people got their necessary first aid. Claire found a sewing kit in the dresser and began to work on some of the deeper cuts. I was glad I wasn’t one of them. 

Eventually, I sat up, drank some water, and munched on some peanuts. There was definitely a bump growing on the back of my head where I’d slammed into the wall and it hurt to swallow because of the bruises I’d gotten from being strangled. 

Percy took a long shower and changed into some gift shop clothes. After popping some ambrosia squares, he looked a lot better, but he still had the bone structure of someone who was supposed to be a lot larger. 

Frank arrived with plastic bags full of food. 

“I come bearing gifts,” he declared, and the room cheered and passed around the options. 

“Wow, Frank, how do you look taller?” Percy grumbled.

Frank laughed before he answered. 

“I’m not, you’re just shorter.”

“Hey!”

“You look like shit by the way,” Frank continued. 

“Thanks.” He glared comically. “Man, how long has it been since I’ve seen you?”

“Long time,” he replied almost sadly. 

Percy pushed a chunk of hair out of his face. 

“Anybody got scissors?” he called, changing the subject. 

He was met with a chorus of no’s and shaking heads. 

“I’ve got a dagger,” I responded. 

“That’ll work.” He shrugged. 

I pulled my dagger out from my boot and debated walking it to him. In the end, I figured he’d be the kind of person who could catch a blade whirling at his head and tossed it. He caught it easily and began chopping his hair into the trash can. 

“Seriously, Percy?” Annabeth complained. “You couldn’t wait until we got back?”

“I’ve been waiting to cut my hair for seven months. I refuse to wait any longer.”

“You’re an idiot,” she mumbled before looking back down at her laptop. “What do you know about the sleeping knights?”

“Uh, they’re not asleep anymore?” he teased. 

“The hero of Olympus everyone.”

They bickered endlessly while I picked apart a BLT. The lettuce was wilted and mushy, but I ate it anyway since it had been a long time since I’d eaten my last vegetable. Most everyone was crammed to the side of the room I was sitting on because Percy was on the other side. Even though nobody would dare be the first to admit it, he made them uncomfortable. 

Gordon barely took his eyes off him, tracking his every movement as if waiting for him to blow the whole building to smithereens. I didn’t doubt he was capable of it. 

Annabeth spent hours trying to figure out where the knights went after they’d been taken from the cave. 

I took a nap. 

When I woke up it was dark outside, and the bedside clock told me it was three in the morning. Everyone else was asleep either here or in the other room. I noticed the boy/girl division hadn’t lasted. Annabeth was still awake, sitting at the desk with the light of her laptop glowing in the dark. 

“Find anything?” I whispered, and she flinched at the address. 

“No, not yet. What are you doing awake?”

“I don’t know. I guess I’m used to not having time to sleep.”

“Yeah, me too,” she sighed and closed her computer. “Let’s go into town.”

“Now?”

She stood and began to push her feet into her shoes. 

“Yeah. I need to move.”

I hesitated before throwing off the covers and looting around the room for my jacket and shoes. I followed her quietly out of the hotel and down the gravel road. We walked in silence until the small town at the base of the mountains came into view. 

“I think I have to go back up the mountain,” she said. 

I studied her face as she stared into the distance without actually seeing the small neon lit buildings in front of us. 

“The others aren’t going to like that. There are still demons up there, and more will be coming.”

“They won’t be joining me.”

“You think you’re going alone?”

She bowed her head, watching her feet crunch on the gravel road. 

“I can’t think of another way to track down the knights,” she explained. 

I grasped for other options.

“Couldn’t Rowena do a tracking spell or something?”

“I asked, but we don’t have anything that their souls are tied to. Hell, we don’t even know if they have souls anymore. I need more information, and this is how I’m going to get it,” she resolved. 

I hesitated, wondering if I should bother arguing further. I remembered Annabeth’s skill with the sword, her quick thinking, and her determination. She’d be able to survive. Right?

“Okay,” I conceded. She didn’t seem surprised that I agreed with her, and moved on. 

“I’m telling you first because I need your help with something,” she said.

“What do you need?” I asked.

“I need you to take them back up the river.”

“Look, I know I said that they wouldn’t be happy about going back up the mountain, but they will. You don’t have to go alone,” I encouraged her. 

“I know.”

“All you have to do is ask,” I pressed on. 

“I know,” she said more forcefully this time. “And I know that’s how Luke got them to come this far, but I won’t let them die for me.”

“But you’re perfectly willing to die alone,” I bit back. 

“I’ll be fine if you make enough noise, attack demon hideouts, make them think we’ve moved on.” She glanced around at the buildings that had fallen in around us. 

“If. And if we fail?” I exclaimed. I wasn’t ready to lose another friend, especially one as formidable as Annabeth. 

“Then I’ll die. That’s why I’m asking you,” she admitted as if it meant something to me. 

“Please, I’m the most likely to fail.”

I rolled my eyes, and she shrugged her shoulders. 

“Maybe, but my gut tells me you’re the one that’s gonna keep them alive.”

“You’re going off of a gut feeling?” I asked. 

“Always trust your gut.”

“But you said I was just surviving,” I reminded her from a time that was only a week or so ago.

“And I stand by that. Let’s get coffee,” she declared. 

“Lovely way to change the subject m’lady.”

She didn’t respond. We wandered into a shop with a steaming cup of coffee on the billboard. There was a pile of rubble out front, and pieces of plywood were nailed to the walls as a temporary measure to fix some of the damage the hurricane had caused. 

Inside, there was one man behind the coffee bar with a book open in his lap. He greeted us first in Polish, but corrected in practiced English when he saw the vacant looks on our faces. 

“Good morning to you. What can I get you ladies?”

“Black coffee for me,” Annabeth responded instantly.

“What kind of roast would you like?” the man continued, clicking the keys on the register.

“Whichever you recommend,” she dismissed.

“Very good. And for you?” He looked at me.

“I’ll have the same.”

We sat down at a small round table while he poured our drinks from the steaming brewer. It had been a long time since I’d had a drink that didn’t come in a disposable container, and I found myself savoring the comfort it offered. 

“How do you think Asa and that girl are doing?” I chatted because it seemed safer to avoid the earlier topic of conversation. 

“They should be fine.”

“And if they’re not?” I challenged because I couldn’t help myself. 

She stared at me and told me to drink my coffee. I took a sip before trying again. 

“Tell me about Percy,” I prompted.

“What do you want to know?” she asked, which was a much better response than I’d been hoping for, so I decided to risk it. 

“Why is everyone so afraid of him?” I wondered. 

“People are afraid of what they can’t control.”

I kept my eyes trained on her, so she would continue. She didn’t make eye contact but peered down at the cup of coffee between her hands.

“Even before The Shift, Percy didn’t like to be controlled. But back then, I think he had faith, at least a little, enough to hold him back. If you looked close, you could see that his faith was a giant dam, holding back gallons of water as it pressed on him every day. Most people weren’t paying attention, so they weren’t afraid. They practically worshiped him, but that was before The Shift. This is after, and...well, when a dam breaks, you don’t try to hold back the sea; you get out of the way.”

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but this seems like the exact opposite of getting out of his way.”

“That’s right.” She nodded and blew on her coffee. 

“But we’re doing it anyway,” I continued.

“Also true.”

“Why exactly?” I prodded. 

“Because he’d do the same for me,” she said with a level of certainty that was more than a little disconcerting. 

“Annabeth-”

“Holly, don’t,” she cut me off and pierced me with her gaze. This was not something to be argued. I sat in silence, taking small drinks from my mug. 

“Do you love him?” I asked at last. 

“I do,” she responded. 

“Do you think he’s good?” The sincerity of my question wasn’t lost on her as she paused to think for a long moment. 

“I do,” she decided.

We paid for our coffee with a few stray American bills that the cashier accepted reluctantly and went back to the hotel. Most everyone was up by the time we got back since the sun was beaming through the blinds. This was still earlier than I ever woke up before. 

Eventually, Tamara asked what the plan was. Annabeth began to explain what she had told me on our walk into town. 

“Holly will take you back to the boat while I head up the mountain-”

“I’ll go with you,” Percy butted in. 

“No, I need to do this alone.”

Percy rolled his eyes and spun around in the chair he was sitting in. 

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he said.

Annabeth sighed. 

“Percy they need you on the boat, and I’m not risking taking you right back into the prison I just yanked you out of,” she explained with large arm movements. 

“You don’t have to convince me that it makes sense. I’m sure you’ve thought it through, but that doesn’t change the fact that I’m not letting us split up.”

“Percy-”

“That’s when all the bad stuff happens. When we split up.” He was beginning to sound anxious.

“Percy-”

“Do you remember absolutely nothing?” he accused. 

“Perseus Jackson, you are getting on that boat, and you are leaving me behind,” Annabeth snapped. 

After a long moment of silence, he stood abruptly and grabbed a jacket from where it was hanging loosely over a chair. 

“Where are you going?” Annabeth sighed when he brushed past her on his way out the door. 

“Out. My opinion is obviously a waste of air in here.”

He slammed the door behind him. Annabeth grumbled the rest of her instructions before moving on to pack and clean everything out of the rooms. 

Percy didn’t come back until lunch when we had all bandaged our wounds and packed our bags. Annabeth was finishing up tracing routes on the last set of maps when he waltzed in. He headed straight for where she was sitting at the desk with her work. With his hands stuffed in his pockets, he took a seat on the foot of the bed near her. 

“I’m sorry,” he mumbled, only audible because of the anxious silence that had blanketed the room for a couple of hours now. 

“Go on,” Annabeth pressed. 

“For a split second, I forgot not to argue with you. I blame the months of torture,” he grumbled. 

“Why would you do that when it’s obviously the seaweed in your brain?”

“You think you’re funny, don’t you?” he laughed. 

She narrowed her eyes at him before turning back to her work. 

“So, when are we leaving?” I asked. 

“We can leave now,” Annabeth said.

“Now, as in, right now?” Harvey clarified.

“Yeah, I’ve just about finished up here, and we should definitely go soon if you guys want to get to the boat before dark.”

“I’ll get my coat then,” Percy stated.

Leaving the hotel was a weird experience. It made me almost sad, but when I tried to pinpoint why, I couldn’t come up with anything concrete. Annabeth left us with the majority of her supplies, which included nearly all of her remaining ambrosia and food. After some persuasion, she relinquished her laptop to Percy, so her backpack could be left behind as well. 

The walk back to the boat was shorter than I remembered it, but I supposed most return trips had the same illusion. Before I knew it, I could see the river stretching through the trees and our old boat bobbing in the current. 

Percy led the way. When he stepped onto the boat, it responded. The mast twisted and straightened, the ropes flew to their required positions, and the deck shone as if freshly waxed. It made Claire pause for a second and stare. She remained there even when the rest of us had boarded. 

“You coming?” Percy asked.

“Was that you?” 

He shrugged, “Son of Poseidon has a few benefits here and there.”

She continued to hesitate as Percy held out his hand to help her up. She eventually got on without it, leaving his hand to dangle in the air uselessly. 

Once recovered from the rejection, Percy commanded the ship to sail upstream. It did, without question. 

We did as Annabeth had instructed, hunting down hordes of demons wherever we could find them. We fell into an easy rhythm of attacking fast before retreating to the river. Three days passed like this, following the same patterns. Rowena had a few spells to track down demon activity, and combined with the experience of Tamara, Gordon, and Claire, finding them was the easiest part of each conquest. 

A few miles from the river, in the center of a town none of us knew by name, there was a run down bar that buzzed with demonic omens.

We split into two teams, one on defense surrounding the bar, and one inside. Ever since Annabeth had declared me some sort of leader, the others had begun to put more faith in me. They didn’t even ask anymore if I wanted to stay outside, but waited for me to lead the charge through the old wooden door. Gordon, Claire, and Percy followed just behind. 

Every stool in every booth was filled with a demon, and every pair of empty eyes stared at us, breaking the chatter that had existed moments before. 

“We’ve been wondering when you were going to show up,” leered a demon with cropped hair who stood just in front of the bar. 

“Yeah, traffic’s a bitch,” Percy chatted easily. There was something about the way that he goaded on each demon we fought that made me uncomfortable. 

“I thought that you’d be traveling by sea, Son of Poseidon,” the demon continued. 

Percy chuckled. 

“No, you see, that was sarcasm. I thought you would get it, but that’s totally my bad. I’ll try to slow it down for you next time.”

The demon’s fist launched for his head, but Percy moved to the side without removing his hand from his pockets. The movement broke the uncomfortable peace in the bar, and the rest of the demons stood to attack. 

Percy uncapped his pen/sword thing that I didn’t entirely understand and began to hack at the enemy. 

I mostly tried to stay alive as demons threw me at walls and slashed at me with blades. One wearing bright red lipstick trapped me in a corner, and I thrust my blade into whatever piece of flesh I could find. She didn’t collapse until Gordon took off her head with a shining bronze sword.

“Thanks,” I muttered as I stood. 

Around me, the crowd of monsters had thinned, but there were still enough to outnumber us. Claire was winning her battle against a thin man while the demon with the buzzcut continued to goad Percy by the bar. 

Claire’s demon fell to the floor with a yell, and she turned to see who was left. I turned to help Percy where he was quickly surrounded by demons. I took them out as fast as I could. 

“It’s such a shame that they’ve got you on a leash,” Buzzcut crooned. 

I ducked under a blade that whipped over my head. 

“What it must be like to have the power to move continents, but not the freedom to use it,” he hissed. I heard Percy snort as if what he was saying was ridiculous, but I remembered Annabeth’s words. 

Percy didn’t like to be controlled. The demon was toying with him. I slashed through a demon’s jacket, but failed to make contact with skin. 

“We can offer you safety. You and Chase.” 

A strong grip wrapped around me from behind, a cool blade pressed against my throat. I looked around for help, but Gordon and Claire were in the same predicament. 

“Let them go,” Percy ordered, his sword hanging at his side. It glowed brilliantly in the dim light of the bar. 

“I can’t do that. They’re my insurance.”

Percy paused, looked around at our faces, the knives at our throats. I recognized the look on his face from Annabeth when she was calculating the possibilities. He put the cap back on his sword, and it shrunk into a ballpoint pen. 

“You have my attention,” he said. 

“I have a deal to make with you, and I encourage you to at least consider it.”

“Obviously,” Percy groaned. “Can we get to the point?”

“You can’t win this war. You’re outgunned, outnumbered, out-strategized. You won’t last until the end of summer. So in exchange for you joining the winning side, we can offer you protection. Security. Peace,” the demon listed as if he was reading a list of everything Percy had ever wanted. 

“Annabeth too?”

“Of course.”

The silence that followed was only filled by my struggling breaths. If he agreed, I’d have to get out of this hold by myself. I remembered the window behind me, and I wondered if I was small enough to fit through it. Percy broke the silence at last.

“You’ve done your research,” he said. The demon grinned. 

“Do we have a deal?”

“I’m afraid not,” he declined. “I have a promise to keep.”

“Wrong choice.”

The demon lunged at Percy with his weapon, but Percy was faster. He dodged the strike and used the demon’s momentum against him to send him stumbling forward. He signaled his henchmen to slit our throats, but with a wave of his hand, Percy made them drop their knives. 

They dropped each of us from their grips and stood rigidly to the side. After a moment of struggling against whatever Percy had done to them, they smoked out of their bodies and escaped through the cracks in the woodwork. 

Mr. Buzzcut threw us against the wall with three synchronized thuds. I winced at the force and tried to pull myself free, but I was supernaturally glued to the surface. My stomach wrenched, and when I coughed, blood came out. The demon laughed.

“You’re going to regret that,” Percy chortled, his glare heavy and dark. 

The air in the bar bent toward him as fury rolled off of him in waves. Outside the wind began to howl, and rain pelted the windows. The demon’s smile dropped into horror, and he lost his focus long enough to release his hold on me, so I fell to the ground. 

Percy reached his arms out to either side and took a deep breath in. Streams of blood, sweat, and rain swirled into the air to obey his command. Percy smirked as he sent the sheets hurtling toward the demon. He tried to smoke out, but Percy blocked him with a pool of blood. 

He wrenched the demon’s body against him, twisting and pulling the liquid to his command. The demon begged for mercy, but Percy only laughed. Then he exploded into a mist of red and black smoke before it bubbled into nothing. 

He exhaled, the rain stopped, the wind calmed, the air lightened, and the liquid dropped to the floor. The murky water lapped at my shoes until it soaked through to my socks. I stared at the son of Poseidon. 

“We should go,” he said, and we followed him out of the bar. 

Nobody spoke a word on our way back to the boat. Once aboard and sailing, I retreated to the lower level, so I could towel off some of the blood. I was resting on the lumpy mattress when Gordon walked in. 

“Do you have a moment?” he asked quietly as if not to disturb the awkward silence that had lasted for nearly an hour now. 

“Yeah, sure, do you wanna talk about something?” I responded while sitting up on the edge of the bed. 

Gordon shifted uncomfortably before settling for leaning against the counter with his arms crossed. He didn’t make eye contact as he spoke, but looked at the ground as if it would provide him some comfort. 

“Back at the bar...what he did to that demon…” he trailed off. It was obvious what he was referring to. 

“Yeah, that’s been bothering me too,” I agreed, glad to have someone speaking up about it instead of pretending it never happened. 

“So we’re on the same page?” He picked his eyes up from the floor, so he could look at me directly. There was something else in his gaze that added weight to his words. He wanted me to act like the leader they had decided I was. 

“Of course, I’ll talk to him about it next time I get a chance,” I reassured him. 

“That’s great, but I’m afraid this might take more than talking.” The same weight hung in his stare. 

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying you’ve been dreaming about him, right? He trusts you, and you know his weak spot.” I glared at him. “Or, so I’ve heard.”

“Absolutely not,” I declared. 

“He has something dark in him, you’ve seen it yourself.”

“Annabeth said he was good,” I argued. He was undeterred, eyes wide and eyebrows twisted. 

“And you believe her? She’s letting her emotions cloud her judgement. Sometimes the best thing we can do for people is make the decision they are too scared to make.”

He pressed his mouth into a thin line like he thought he’d won. I scoffed. 

“Wow, I thought that, even if you doubted everyone else, you’d at least have some respect for her.”

He shrugged. 

“I do up until the moment it interferes with the job. The job is killing monsters, and that thing up there, sailing our ship, that is a monster,” he said with the venom of someone I didn’t know. 

“No. He’s human, and you’re nothing but a coward,” I spat and turned to storm out of the cabin. I rushed up to the upper deck to get away. 

“If you won’t, then I will,” he shouted, but I was already up the stairs. 

Percy was sitting at the bow of the ship, watching the waves dip and grow. I moved to sit next to him with the intent to understand what made Annabeth trust him, but Percy spoke before I could get any words out. 

“He wants me dead, doesn’t he?” he said. 

“Did you hear?” I wondered, and he shrugged. 

“No, I’ve just learned to assume people want me dead until proven otherwise.”

“That sounds like a horrible way to live,” I teased. 

“Eh, you get used to it.” He looked back at the river. “So, what makes you special?”

It took me a second to realize the question was directed at me even though we were the only ones on this part of the ship. 

“Nothing really,” I replied.

“Mmhmm, because that’s why you’re the only person I could contact while I was imprisoned in a magical cave.” He raised a single eyebrow which made me laugh. 

“I don’t know, Sam is positive I’m the Savior in a prophecy, so I guess that makes me worth something.”

“Sam?” he asked. 

“Yeah, Sam Winchester.”

“Winchester. Sam Winchester,” he pondered. “Dean’s brother?”

“I’m sorry?” I exclaimed, the statement sinking in. His eyes widened a little as if an old memory had just come to surface. 

“Yeah, the one he’s always complaining about. I almost forgot about that.”

“They’re brothers?”

“That’s what Dean said.” I raised my eyebrows at him. “He used to pay me visits in the cave. Not to try to hurt me, but just to talk. It was very  _ Silence of the Lambs. _ ”

“What all did he talk about?” I pressed. 

“Nothing that’s really worth anything. Most of it I don’t even remember, but Sam came up a lot. I had a feeling they used to be close,” he explained, but it wasn’t yet enough for me to understand. 

“And he’d just...talk?”

“Yeah, I think he was lonely.” He nodded, picking at the old fabric of the bench. 

“Hard to think of a monster as lonely,” I scoffed. 

“Most monsters were human once.”

The dip in his gaze reminded me of Gordon and his determination to get rid of Percy. Maybe he wasn’t a monster yet, but he could easily become one. I tried to decide if that changed anything. 

The next morning, we received a message from Annabeth. It was a hand-written letter tied to the leg of a large owl, like fucking Harry Potter. The note was short and the handwriting sloppy. Claire was the one to unroll it.

_ 52.255688, 20.979244 _

_ Circe’s Island _

“Where’s Circe’s Island?” Claire asked after she’d passed the slip of paper around. 

Rowena spoke up, “If it’s the one I’m thinking of, it’s on the other side of the ocean.”

“Then we should get going,” Claire sighed. 

“In theory, but there’s a small problem with that idea. The island was destroyed over fifteen years ago,” she continued. 

“Fantastic,” I said. 

“Hey, what’re you guys doing?” Percy jumped in, having just returned from the river completely dry. 

“Annabeth sent a message,” Claire explained and handed him the slip of paper. 

He struggled to read the handwriting, staring at it for a long time with his eyebrows knitting together. 

“So, what does this part say?” He pointed to the second half. 

“Circe’s Island,” Claire offered. 

“Oh! Okay, that makes more sense.”

Claire rolled her eyes. 

“Well, I’m glad you get it. Do you feel like letting the rest of us in on the joke?” she berated. 

“It’s not a joke, just a plan. She probably didn’t want it falling into the wrong hands. We’ll go to the coordinates and blend in with whatever’s there. We won’t attack until we have to.”

“How on earth did you get that?” I wondered. 

Percy shrugged and headed toward the front of the ship to begin plotting our course once again. 

“It’s a long story,” he dismissed. 

I shared a look with Claire, but neither of us pressed for more information. Soon enough, we were headed in a new direction down a larger river with tall trees all around.


	12. We Have Fun Storming the Castle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> they walk into a hotel of demons and kiss some ass

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if you know what the chapter title is in reference to, i love you unconditionally

“Is this the place?” I asked. 

We’d docked a while ago and hitchhiked a few miles onto the shore to get to the exact coordinates that Annabeth had listed. Percy led us into a small plaza with a fountain in the center and a few dozen picnic tables. 

“This is where the coordinates line up,” he confirmed. 

“And you’re sure about that?” Gordon bit. Percy pretended he didn’t hear the accusation in his tone and searched through the crowd for a sign that Annabeth had been there. 

“Believe it or not, way finding is under Poseidon’s domain,” he said. 

I looked around for Annabeth, but she wasn’t anywhere to be seen, and there weren’t enough people there to suggest she was buried in the crowd. We wandered closer to the fountain, and I took the opportunity to sit on the edge. It had been a long time since I’d been able to sit down. Claire sat next to me and stretched out her legs. 

“So what do we do now?” she groaned. 

Percy didn’t answer right away but continued scanning the clusters of people. His eyes settled on an empty space nearby. 

“I’m sure Annabeth has a plan,” he said with a grin. 

“I’m sure she does, but she isn’t here,” Claire continued, but Percy’s smile only grew. 

“Are you going to show yourself, or do I have to splash you?” he called into the empty space. 

Suddenly the air flickered, and Annabeth materialized, holding a baseball cap in her hand. She appeared a little worse for wear, like she hadn’t had the chance to shower or sleep for awhile. Her hair was unruly but tied back nonetheless. 

“Splash me and I’ll kill you,” she threatened, and Percy laughed. 

He threw an arm over her shoulders and held her close. 

“Thank you for not dying,” he mumbled. 

She didn’t answer but let him hang close while she ran over what needed to be done. She led us behind some trees where there wasn’t a crowd of passerby to watch us. Once we were out of sight, she fished a variety of supplies out of the pockets of her shorts and gave them to Rowena. 

“You’re looking for a spell I take it?” she asked. 

“We’re going to need to blend in. I did some research, that should be enough to cover us in some glamour.”

Rowena nodded and began to put the ingredients together. 

“They’re going to check for weapons on the way in, so I took the liberty of acquiring a few magical ones for you all, but I couldn’t find enough for everyone. Rowena, Harvey, and Frank will have to go without as well as one other person.”

“I’ll do it,” Claire offered before anyone else could gather the courage. 

“Great. That leaves you three to fight over the necklace that turns into a sword, the bracelet that does a bunch of things that I didn’t have the time to figure out, and the incantation that an old lady swore would bring you ‘the tools to defend yourself in your time of need’.”

She brought out the trinkets and tossed them in our general direction before moving onto other pieces of the plan. Tamara and Gordon were faster than me in picking out their weapons, Tamara claiming the bracelet after Gordon grabbed the necklace, so I was left with the piece of loose leaf paper with a few lines of poetry. I felt so safe. 

After Rowena’s glamour spell took hold, I found myself wearing an intricate dress that had golden trim and flowed to my knees. The others sported similarly elegant outfits with suit jackets and fancy dress shirts. 

“Nice work,” Annabeth complimented Rowena who was looking even more fabulous than normal.

“It’ll wear off in about an hour, so we’re in a bit of a rush.”

“Aren’t we always,” Harvey grumbled, and I couldn’t help but silently agree. 

We followed Annabeth to a hotel with large doors and played nice as we slunk our way inside. It didn’t take long for us to figure out we would have to split up, so we paired off and went our separate ways in search of information. 

Harvey and I stood awkwardly to the side, trying to find a conversation to barge into, but neither of us had the guts to do it. A large man with a long mustache approached us. He smoothed his hand on the fabric of his blazer before reaching it out to shake. 

“I’m Dexter,” he declared. “Who might you be?”

I opened my mouth to speak, but Harvey beat me to it.

“The name’s Dug. This is Fiona,” he lied, and I forgave him for cutting me off. I would’ve given them our real names without a second thought. 

He shook both of our hands in turn, nodding and smiling politely.

“Nice to meet you both. Are you demigods or…?” he wondered. 

“We’re children of Hephaestus, you?”

“Demon.”

“Is it true that all demons were once human?” I asked. Dexter looked at me with a small grin. 

“It is, but most of us don’t remember being human and get offended when it’s brought up.” I didn’t apologize. “What brings you here?” he changed the subject. 

“Fiona better explain that. I just do what she tells me,” he joked, which I took as a hint that he’d forgotten that part of Annabeth’s briefing and was hoping that I knew more. 

I shot him a glare but smiled at Dexter. 

“We were working under Alastair on some projects, but then he went and died, so here we are, networking with the best of them. You wouldn’t happen to know of any placements that are taking demigods, would you?” I rambled. 

Dexter nodded as if he was convinced much to my surprise, but then he registered my question and frowned. 

“I’m afraid not. Unless you want to go back to the States,” he offered. I sighed in fake discontent. 

“That’s what I thought.” I scrambled for a transition. “Have you been here before?” I asked in hopes that he had. 

“Once or twice.”

What had Annabeth said about getting information from people? There was a way I was supposed to do this, a trick. Harvey stayed quiet beside me, so I figured he didn’t have a clue. I had to say something before the demon redirected the conversation. 

“I heard it’s the Knight’s favorite vacation spot,” I rambled. 

“Nah.” He shook his head. “You probably just heard about the knights.”

And that was it. They might not answer a question, but they loved correcting you. 

“You mean the Princes of Hell?” I said. 

“No, the sleeping knights. They’re supposedly some legendary warriors that Alastair captured. He bound them here somewhere.”

“Right. The spirits.” I pretended to remember. “But you can’t bind a soul to a place.”

“You can do anything with the right tools,” he said with a smirk. 

Harvey jumped in now that he seemed to understand the goal of this conversation. I had to give it to him; he was a lot better at doing things on the fly. 

“And you think this hotel has the right tools? I don’t think so, and I know a thing or two about tools,” he bragged, adjusting his cuff links. 

The demon took the bait and leaned in close like he was whispering a grand secret. Idiot. 

“You can’t see it because you’re part mortal, but this place is coated in enchantments. It wouldn’t surprise me if they were crawling around under our feet.” He smiled and pointed at the hardwood floor. I glanced at the ground, then at Harvey. 

“Yeah, a dungeon would probably be the least interesting thing about this place,” I laughed. “Did you see that there was a rooftop pool?” 

“There’s a rooftop pool?” Harvey exclaimed with an excitement he didn’t have to fake. 

“I gave you the brochure, did you even look at it?” I lied. 

“Of course not,” he scoffed. “So are you going to take me to the pool or not?”

I grumbled and bid my goodbyes to Dexter before dragging Harvey to the side. I kept pulling him along until I found Percy and Annabeth chatting up a crowd of demons, witches, and other mystical beings around a coffee table. 

They stood side by side, Annabeth’s arm hooked into Percy’s elbow, Annabeth’s hair flowing freely in tamed curls past her shoulders, the grey of her eyes striking against her blue silk dress. It matched Percy’s suit, but that was the last thing that proved to me they belonged together. Instead, it was the casual way they hung around each other, the small communications that meant nothing to those around them. 

When Percy spotted us crossing the room, he whispered something into Annabeth’s ear. She turned her head, made a quick calculation, and excused herself from the crowd. 

“Perfect timing, do you want to join me in the bathroom?” she asked me with a smile since the enemy was still in earshot. 

“Why not? Harvey can entertain himself,” I joked. 

She led me through the clusters of people to the edge of the room where the sign for the restrooms dangled from the ceiling. She checked each of the stalls before turning to me in the small space. 

“What did you find?” she asked, her smile gone.

“There’s a dungeon in this hotel, probably covered in warding, that’s where Alastair bound the knights.” 

Annabeth nodded before adding on.

“That’s what I heard too. The people here don’t seem to believe the knights have any real power. We might be able to use that.” She fiddled with the silver bracelets that wrapped around her wrist. 

“Should we get the others?” I asked. 

“There’s no time for that. It’ll draw attention to us, and the glamour has to be almost used up by now. We need a distraction to get past the security and into the basement.”

I wracked my brain. 

“There’s a rooftop pool,” I offered. 

“That’ll work.” She wound her hair into a ponytail. “Ready?”

“Nope.” I pushed open the bathroom door. “Let’s go.”

We walked as calmly as we could back to Harvey and Percy. We laughed and chatted for a few moments before Annabeth mumbled through gritted teeth. 

“Rooftop pool. Nobody.”

Percy smirked and chuckled along with a demon’s joke. He wrapped his arm around Annabeth’s waist to hide the clenching of his fist. He took a sip of his drink, and the roof caved in, pouring water onto the heads of each expertly coiffed head. 

“What the hell!” Percy hollered as the water continued to crash through the ceiling. Annabeth screeched in fake surprise, and I did the same. Chaos broke loose as people raced for the exits. 

“It’s the Son of Poseidon!” someone shrieked. “He’s found us!”

A figure grew out of the water, fleshed out with pool noodles and dropped wine glasses to look like a person. It was the strangest scarecrow I’d ever seen. Percy twisted the figure to fight whoever blocked its path as we made our way to the basement. 

We passed Gordon, Rowena, and Frank and dragged them along. Claire and Tamara were waiting by the door over two corpses. Tamara’s bracelet whirled around her hand before settling back into place. 

“Let’s move,” Claire ordered and wrenched open the door. On the other side, was a dark hallway that echoed with voices in the distance. 

A demon shouted from the main room, having spotted us making our great escape, suddenly the whole crowd was pouring to attack. Percy dropped the water from his grip and grabbed Annabeth’s wrist. They were through the door and running before my brain could catch up. I stumbled after them. The only sounds were the pounding of feet behind me. My hair stuck to my face in wet streaks, and my shoes scraped against my ankles with every step. 

We came to a dead end and stopped in our tracks. Rowena ran her hands up and down the stone to reveal the spell work etched into the surface. 

“I can crack it,” she declared, but the demons were already there. 

Frank became a saber tooth tiger, growling, mouth frothing, teeth gnashing. Gordon transformed his necklace into a sword and Tamara’s bracelet danced a thousand different ways. She turned to see the rest of us, surrounding Rowena as she chanted. The wall fell away, exposing more dark hallways. 

“Go!” Tamara yelled. “We’ll hold them off.”

Frank snarled in agreement, and we flew deeper into the darkness. My chest was aching, but I’d gotten used to the pain of running. Behind me, the yells of battle raged on, and more of my team dropped off to defend against the demons. Soon, we arrived at an opening where a barred cell blocked off a crowd of soldiers and horses with their heads bowed. 

We did a quick head count on who had made it this far instead of holding back the demons from killing us. Percy had taken off his suit jacket, and Annabeth had torn off the bottom of her dress. Other than them, it was me and Claire. 

We stared through the bars at the sleeping knights. Claire yanked on the door, which came loose after only a couple of pulls. It creaked on its metal hinges, leaving a large opening where we could enter the cell. We filed in silently and looked around the room.

“Something’s wrong,” Annabeth said. “That was too easy.”

“It wasn’t that easy,” I argued. My feet were still aching from fleeing, and I could hear our friends shouting from where we’d come. 

“No, she’s right,” said Claire. “This is a trap.”

The door we’d come through slammed shut, and the sound echoed throughout the dungeon as if taunting our mistake. I ran to try to wrench it open once again, but it wouldn’t budge. Percy drew his sword, Annabeth followed, and the glow of their enchantments lit the room, exposing a small figure with shadows under his eyes. I recognized him immediately. 

“Nico,” I gasped. “You’re the Son of Hades.”

“And you’re The Flame,” he mimicked with a stare as cold as the stone boxing us in. 

“What are you doing in Dean’s dungeon?” Claire accused. 

“It’s not his dungeon. He might be getting pretty high and mighty up in his tower, standing on the heads of demons, but I am the Ghost King, which means those prisoners are  _ my  _ prisoners, and this is my dungeon.”

“I love what you’ve done with the place. Do you mind letting us out?” Percy wondered.

“Percy,” Annabeth stopped him. 

“What?”

“He’s not on our side.”

Percy’s posture changed as he scanned the son of death for some sort of proof. I thought him locking us in a cage would be evidence enough, but apparently that happened too often for Percy to take any offense from it. 

“Let us out, Neeks,” he deadpanned. 

“Can’t do that, Kelp Head.”

“You son of a bitch. After  _ everything  _ we’ve done for you-”

“She’s my family,” he interrupted. Percy narrowed his eyes and grew closer to the bars that separated us from him. 

“We are your family. She’s supposed to be dead-”

“You already tried that,” Nico grumbled. 

“What’s dead should stay dead, no matter the cause.”

“Big words for someone whose general rose from the same grave.” Nico straightened his shoulders and met Percy’s gaze with a challenge. Percy’s eyes flicked back and forth across his face. 

“What are you talking about?” he queried. 

“Annabeth didn’t tell you?” Nico chided with mock confusion. He tilted his head and smirked. 

Percy turned to Annabeth who was standing to the side with her jaw clenched and her arms crossed. Her eyes were stormy, and they were trained on the wall behind Percy instead of meeting his glare. He didn’t speak, but waited for Annabeth to explain. The silence weighed on my shoulders. Finally, Annabeth sighed and began to ramble her summary of what had happened. 

“When the dead started rising, after they’d already taken you captive, I found Luke in Lincoln park. He’s been leading the fight ever since,” she said. 

“When were you planning on telling me this?” His voice rose in pitch, and I could see his anguish in the tightness of his shoulders and back. Annabeth narrowed her eyes. 

“I didn’t think it was that important right now, you know, running from armies of demons and all?” She uncrossed her arms, so she could use them to punctuate her sarcasm. 

“Not that important? He tried to kill me, several times actually. He almost ended the world.” He waved his arms around. “He almost killed you,” he said while looking directly into Annabeth’s eyes. She stood steady. 

“He was a hero in the end.” Percy scoffed. “Besides, things have changed. You’ve been gone for a long time, so won’t you just take my word for it?”

Percy hesitated. 

“Not this time.” He whipped around to face Nico once more. “Let us go, Nico, or I’ll do it myself.”

“I can’t let that happen.” 

He mumbled something in a language I didn’t understand, but mostly consisted of ghostly chattering. The knights raised their heads and drew their swords. In one synchronized movement, they began to attack. 

Pinned against the metal bars, ducking under a shining sword, I heard Nico murmur, “I’m sorry,” and I wondered if he was truly lost. He faded into the shadows, abandoning us to fight the dead all alone. 

I figured if I ever had a ‘time of need’ this was it. I took off my shoe and bashed a knight over the head with the heel, buying me enough time to fish around the sole for where I’d tucked my little sheet of paper. I unfolded it hurriedly and glanced at the writing. At first, it was in a language I didn’t understand, but after a moment, the text morphed into English. I could get behind magic for that if it didn’t also try to kill me most of the time. 

“I am floating, a tree without roots, so give me the feet to fill my boots,” I read. Nothing happened. 

Well, something happened. A knight almost took my head off. I pushed him as hard as I could, but he didn’t budge. I settled for dodging and running around the cell. Percy and Annabeth stood back to back, slicing through the knights only for them to stand back up again, good as new. 

Claire was unconscious, collapsed against a wall. I ran to her side. I felt for a pulse and shouted her name. Tears formed under my eyelids, and I wiped them away before they could blur my vision. My yells attracted more knights, and they came after where we sat. I was completely defenseless. 

“I am floating, a tree without roots, so give me the feet to fill my boots,” I chanted. 

A sword came for Claire’s head, but I lunged myself at its holder. I felt a cold slice somewhere on my thigh and cried out. Still, I scrambled back to Claire’s side. I repeated the lines of the incantation as the knights zeroed in on their target. I punched my fists into the unmovable metal of their armor. I felt something crack, but I kept pounding, chanting, crying because I couldn’t help it anymore. 

I fell back against Claire’s chest. I could feel the rise and fall of her breaths growing weaker. I held up my hands to block the strikes I knew were coming, and sobbed out the rhyme once more even though the words had ceased to have any meaning. 

A bright orange light broke through the darkness, and I turned toward the source. In my hand, was a single flame. It danced across my palm so close it should’ve burned, but it only dried the tears from my cheeks. 

The knight above me thrust its sword down to finish me off, but I lifted the flame to protect me. That’s what it was supposed to do, right? I didn’t feel the pain of a blade cutting through me, so I looked up in time to see fire wrapping around invisible chains and melting them to the floor. The knight dropped his sword and looked at me in awe. 

The fire spread. It broke the magical bonds of every warrior until the fighting stopped completely, and they were all looking at their hands that were finally free from their restraints. They turned to face me, and the fire in my hand blinked out. 

The first knight got down on one knee and ducked his head. The clanking of his armor broke the silence, and the rest of the legion followed until they were all bowing at my feet. Except, I wasn’t standing, but sitting huddled up against the wall with blood, sweat, and tears caking my skin while my unconscious friend gasped her each intake of air. 

“You have freed us,” the first knight began. “What is your name?”

“Uh- Holly?” I stuttered. 

“Poland owes you a great debt, Holly of the Flame. As is tradition, a life for a life, so will be our freedom, for our servitude.” 

He drew his sword from where it rested in his sheath and laid it on the ground before me. The legion followed without a moment’s hesitation. I was finding it hard to breathe. 

“Um. Thanks? I guess.”

Annabeth rolled her eyes at me from where she stood.

“What are your orders, your grace?” the knight continued. 

I was ready to dismiss him out of hand, set him and the others packing. We didn’t need any help. We could manage this on our own without taking advantage of millennia old knights with a sick repayment plan. There was a slight problem with that. We definitely needed help. 

“Could you get us out of here?” I asked. 

“As you wish.”

He began to bark orders at the rest of them to tear down the bars, which they did with their bare hands. They marched us back down the corridors, collecting our friends as we went. When we finally arrived back in the main room, there were more demons than when we had left, and they were ready for us. 

The knights took them two at a time. I became very aware of the fact that my only weapon was a little bit of fire, and I wasn’t willing to take the chance that it was coming back again. I searched for something sharp. 

A chair from the other side of the room flew toward my side. I jumped out of the way just in time for it to rush through the air where I’d been standing. A demon with lopsided pigtails threw me against a wall. Being supernaturally thrown against walls was getting a little old. I groaned. 

She lunged at me with a serrated knife, but I turned my head, and it landed in the wall next to my ear. Now that it was closer, I could see the ancient engravings that covered the steel of the blade. 

The demon yanked it out of the wall with a grunt. I took the opportunity to pull her hair, which wasn’t very mature, but it did the trick. I scratched at her eyes, and she howled. Then, with her hands coming to protect her face, I bit down on her wrist. As I’d hoped she would, she dropped the knife. 

I lunged for it before she could realize what she’d done. She landed on my back where I was splayed on the ground. Her arms were stronger than mine, but I somehow held onto the hilt of the knife as we grappled on the ground. 

We twisted and turned until my back was pressed to the floor and the demon’s grip was wrapped around each of my wrists. She squeezed and pushed at my hand with the knife while I fought to keep it away from my throat. Her face was so close to mine I could see the flaring of her nostrils with each breath. It reminded me of every romantic novel I’d ever read, so I decided to do something stupid. 

I leaned up and pressed my mouth against hers. Then I immediately regretted it. Her lips were slimy and disgusting, and now that I was here, it generally felt like a much worse idea than I had bargained for, but her grip was loosening, so I heaved my force into the knife until it sunk into her torso. 

She screamed, her black eyes staring into my own as her life flashed away. Her vessel collapsed on top of me, so her face was pressed against my cheek. I cringed and pushed the limp corpse out of my personal space. 

I stood up and brushed off my clothes. When I looked up, I saw Claire standing in front of me. She was staring with an open mouth at me and the pig-tailed corpse twisted into a heap on the ground. 

“Did you just…?” she started. 

“I did.” I straightened my skirt. “And now that we’ve publicly acknowledged it, let’s never speak of it again.”

A demon snuck up behind her, and she smacked it with a two by four that had bloody nails sticking out of it. The demon collapsed. Whipping her hair back, she wiped off a bit of blood that had splattered on her face. 

“If we survive this, you’ve got yourself a deal.” She smirked. I adjusted the knife in my grip, charging into another fight. 

It was a lot easier to not die when there was someone behind you ready to beat a demon over the head with a giant piece of wood. I did my best to return the favor when I could by finishing off the broken vessels Claire left behind. 

The crowd was growing smaller. For the first time in a long time, it seemed like we were winning. Now that the glamour had faded, we were no longer held back by the constraints of formal wear. 

Claire and I were making a break toward the exit when we ran into Percy tearing through swaths of demons with spears of water. Annabeth kept disappearing then reappearing on columns of ice. Percy’s face was contorted in the effort it took to keep so many things under his reign at once. 

On the other side of the room, flashes of vibrant purple ricocheted from Rowena’s open arms. The knights worked with Tamara and Gordon to attack those surrounding them. 

Suddenly, Harvey broke the rhythm by lifting a scrap of metal above his head and slamming it down on Percy’s back. I sprinted to stop the blade before he could make contact with Percy’s weak spot. I tackled Harvey to the ground, landing near a broken table. 

He struggled against me to stand, and despite my best efforts, he was stronger than me. At this point, Percy had noticed that someone was trying to kill him and was on higher alert. 

“What the hell are you doing?” I yelled at Harvey as I blocked his strikes with my new dagger. 

“What I have to,” he grumbled. There was something foreign in his eyes, something twisted. 

“I won’t let you kill him.” I was breathing hard, dodging his blades, keeping him back without hurting him. 

“I’m not asking for your permission,” he growled. 

I caught his wrist with my hand, sending a jolt of pain up my arm. I stared into his eyes and tried to decipher what was different about them. 

“Talk to me, Harvey,” I begged. “Why do you have to kill him?” 

“She said so,” he grumbled, and my worst suspicions were confirmed. 

“The Princess?” His eyes flicked away from my gaze. “She’s telling you what to do?” I continued. “You don’t have to listen to her. You can fight it.”

He wrenched his hand from my grasp and threw me to the ground. I scrambled up as he came at me with the rusty metal blade. I swiped it away from hitting me with the but of my dagger. Sparks flew from the force he put behind each strike. He was backing me up, closer and closer to where Percy and Annabeth were fighting against the demons. 

“Harvey, stop,” I urged. 

He narrowed his eyes and struck again. 

“Harvey, look at me.”

He kicked at my feet, and I barely jumped away in time. 

“Harvey!” I yelled. “Stop it! This isn’t you!”

I tripped over something as I took my next step backward. I fell hard onto the ground behind me and saw the thing I had tripped over was a bloody body. Harvey was on me in a second, and I caught his blade with my knife. They formed a cross over my chest as he seethed with something inhumane. 

“Harvey,” I pleaded. “Look at me.” His eyes darted to make contact with mine. “You died on the ship that day, didn’t you? That’s when she claimed your soul and started forcing you to play along. You don’t have to listen to her. It’s still your soul.”

I grasped for the words that had worked before, with Briares. I saw his eyes flutter, his jaw clench in concentration, before he lifted his sword and thrust it down toward my neck. I rolled away on pure instinct and jabbed him in the side with my elbow. I scrambled to my feet to defend myself. 

He was backing me up toward a wall, and I tried to avoid being cornered, but he had far more training than I did. Faster than I could’ve bargained for, he had me trapped between the oak wood bar and an exposed brick wall. It was strange to see so much blood on such an elegant space. 

With a practiced blow, he knocked my weapon from my hand and held his piece of metal against my throat. He was breathing hard, his eyebrows pinched together under his struggle. 

“Harvey,” I gasped, finding it hard to speak under the pressure of his blade. 

“I don’t want to kill you. You’re my friend,” he confessed. 

“So don’t.”

He was looking directly into my eyes now, begging for my help. 

“Please, get out of my way,” he said, his voice cracking around the words. A tear fell down his cheek and another one welled under his eye. I shook my head as best I could under my constraints. 

“I can’t do that,” I said. 

“Then I don’t have a choice.” His shoulders set and his face pinched together in pain. 

“Harvey-” I choked as his sword pressed harder. “He’s your family.”

I watched the emotions dance across his expression. He shifted from nostalgia, to hope, to fear, to frustration, to grief. More tears carved paths on his face, and he broke eye contact to look shamefully at the ground. 

“Not after I tried to kill him,” he mumbled, voice barely above a whisper. 

I placed my hands on either side of the blade that threatened my life and pushed gently. 

“I forgive you,” I said. 

He glanced back up at me, so close I could see his eyelashes sticking together from salty tears. He shook his head, struggling. I felt him push against the blade once more, but I held it steady despite the burning in my palms. 

Then he went still. His mouth dropped open in an empty gasp, but all that came out was a dribble of blood. His eyes were wide and bloodshot as I saw the anguish disappear. The vibrancy of his life clouded over completely into grey death. 

I heard the sword pull out of his back with a shink and saw Gordon standing where Harvey had been, bloody blade in hand. I gasped for breath. 

“What did you do?” I accused him. His face was unmoving, void of regret. 

“He was going to kill you, Holly,” he sighed like he was explaining to a four year old why they shouldn’t touch the stove.

“No, he wasn’t, I’d almost reached him,” I argued. I felt myself starting to cry. Gordon just stared at me blankly as the tears began to fall.

“The Princess had his soul. He was the enemy, and now that he’s dead, that’s one less monster to fight as far as I’m concerned,” he said. 

I shook my head. 

“You’re horrible,” I hissed. “I hope this war kills you.”

And I meant it.


	13. Justice for George Floyd

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This isn't a chapter, but rather a moment to recognize the black lives matter movement

In light of recent events, namely the murder of George Floyd, I've deemed it necessary to speak up on every platform I have. 

I do not condone the riots that have been happening, but I understand them. People are angry, and they have gone ignored for too long. I myself am as white as they come. I live in a white neighborhood, I've never had to fear the police, and I've never had to work to appear non-threatening. However, I am human, and when I see innocent people being killed for the color of their skin, my heart breaks. 

I know I'm not alone. I'm not the only white person whose heart bleeds for our brothers and sisters, and for so long, I've struggled with how to help. I've been at the protests in my city, and I've listened to the woman standing on the hood of a car, begging to hear my voice, and I've seen the videos.

I understand now. 

I am not risking my life by yelling in front of the county jail. 

Brandi Grayson, the founder and CEO of the leading racial activist group in my city, is risking her life by standing up for what she believes in, and she is pleading for her white supporters to shoulder the responsibility. We are the ones with the power in this world, and it's time we use it. 

Here's how:

Donate

This is a list of bail funds organized by state:

<https://bailfunds.github.io/>

donate to black lives matter

<https://blacklivesmatter.com/>

find local organizations as well, they have websites with places to give whatever you can

But wait! I'm broke!

no worries, you can donate without spending a cent by watching youtube videos. Several accounts have set up videos for people to stream and are donating all ad revenue to the black live matter movement. For this to work, make sure all adblockers are disabled, let the ads play through all the way, and keep the volume up. Other tips and tricks are usually in the comment section. Here are a few to get you started:

<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCgLa25fDHM>

<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NokTSpMH44A>

<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6Xe8N0FNTs>

Become an Annoyance

Contact your representatives to let them know that you want to see community regulation of police officers. Spam their inboxes. Make it more difficult for them to refuse you because people will go toward the path of least resistance. 

If you get anxious talking on the phone, call them in the middle of the night, so you get their voice mail.

If you suck at writing emails, copy and paste the mandates from the black lives matter website. 

If you don't know who represents you, go here:

<https://ballotpedia.org/Who_represents_me>

If your area has more specific stories about police brutality, contact the sergeant and demand that the officer(s) responsible receive convictions. 

Protest

This goes without saying, but I will use this space to give you some safety tips and information. 

First, know your rights. 

You have the right to protest in streets, public parks, and other public spaces. 

You have the right to know why you are being arrested. 

You have the right to remain silent. If an officer is bothering you, say you are exercising your right to remain silent. 

Film everything, but blur out any identifiable parts of other protesters. This includes: faces, tattoos, birthmarks, etc. Save the videos to literally everything. Post them on tiktok, instagram, snapchat, copy them over and over, send them to friends. Prosecutors will do everything they can to delete footage of the arrest. 

Stay hydrated, read up on first aid, know how much money you'll need for bail. Bring bobby pins and look up videos for how to get out of zip ties. 

Before going out, make sure you know what's legal for them to do to you. In Minnesota, the national guard has been encouraged to use LIVE ROUNDS. Across the country, people have been shot with rubber bullets. Trump has told local militia to stop the protests with whatever force necessary. Stay safe.

Volunteer

Also pretty self-explanatory, but it shouldn't go unmentioned. Those lovely local organizations have loads of ways for you to give your time to the cause.

Juneteenth

June 19th is the day that slavery officially became outlawed. In celebration of this day, support black-owned businesses by purchasing their products. 

July 4th - 7th

If you haven't heard already, these are the dates of the economic freeze. For these three days, do not spend any money. Pay your rent or bills early, pack lunches, go grocery shopping before the fourth, BUY NOTHING. 

The people in charge only listen to money, so let's speak their language. 

Fairies

A small way to spread the chaos is something that anyone with an internet connection can do. To fight back against Donald Trump's plea for peaceful protests, groups of young people have taken to commenting the fairy emoji on everything he posts. What could be more peaceful than a fairy?

This includes: twitter, instagram, his online birthday card:

<https://www.donaldjtrump.com/landing/president-trump-birthday-card>

Sign Petitions

<https://www.adhoc.fm/post/black-lives-matter-resources-and-funds/>

This link is a master list of bail funds, petitions, and other places to show your support. 

Conclusion

These are only a few of the things you can do to show your support. You DO NOT have to do all of them, but if you stand with black people, I encourage you to do at least one. Know your own reality. Remember there is a pandemic going on, so if you are unable to leave the house because of health conditions, DON'T. If you _need_ to be a part of the protests, you can have someone facetime you in. You can stand from afar. You can blast speakers from inside your house. There are other ways to be heard. 

If you are white, don't be the one to break things. Learn to follow instead of lead. 

Remember to stay informed on the realities of what is going on. Don't always believe the news. 

It hasn't happened yet, but it is a very real possibility that we may fall into martial law. This removes our right to protest completely and gives all authority to the military. To learn more about the effects of martial law, go here:

<https://www.ncjrs.gov/App/Publications/abstract.aspx?ID=120638#:~:text=Martial%20law%20involves%20the%20temporary,to%20make%20and%20enforce%20laws.>

Feel free to copy this information to other sites, thank you for reading, and as always, #blacklivesmatter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comment other ways you know to help out!!  
> Love you all


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